What is DNS and why does it matter for your law firm website?
DNS is one of those acronyms that sounds technical and off-putting until someone explains it in plain English. Here is the plain English version, written for legal business owners who need to make good decisions about their website without becoming a network engineer.
What DNS actually stands for
DNS stands for Domain Name System. In practice, DNS is the phone book of the internet. When you type a website address into your browser, DNS is what translates that friendly address into the numerical IP address that computers use to find each other.
Without DNS, you would have to remember something like 172.217.169.46 instead of google.com. DNS is what makes the whole system usable for humans.
How DNS connects your domain to your website
You buy a domain name (yourlawfirm.co.uk) from a domain registrar. You buy website hosting from a host. DNS is the layer in between that tells the internet 'when someone asks for yourlawfirm.co.uk, send them to this specific hosting account'.
The instructions live in something called DNS records. The most important ones for a law firm website are the A record (which points your root domain at your hosting) and the CNAME record (which points subdomains like www at the right place). MX records handle your email, and TXT records handle things like SPF and DKIM which stop spammers spoofing your address.
Why DNS matters when you change website providers
This is where most legal businesses come across DNS for the first time. You are moving to a new website builder or a new host, and someone tells you that you need to 'update your DNS'. That means logging into your domain registrar (the place you bought the domain) and changing the A record or nameservers to point at the new host.
DNS changes are not instant. Once you make a change, it takes anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours to spread across the internet. This is called propagation. During that window some visitors see the old site and some see the new one. Planning around that matters when you are launching a new website.
Common DNS problems and what to do about them
'My website is not loading' after a website move usually means either your DNS still points at the old host, your nameservers were not updated correctly, or you are still seeing a cached version and just need to wait for propagation.
'My email has stopped working' after a DNS change is almost always because MX records were not migrated correctly. Always back up MX records before making DNS changes.
The safe rule of thumb: any time you are touching DNS, take a full snapshot of the current records before you change anything. A screenshot is fine. A written note is better.
How Legal Growth manages DNS on website projects
For every website project we run, we handle the DNS side of things end to end. We back up existing records, plan the migration, warn you about propagation windows, and make sure email keeps flowing through the change. If DNS is holding up a website decision for you, that is a solved problem.
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