Parked godaddy page forwarded to ip address?

[monkette]

I have someone who insists on forwarding his parked godaddy page to an ip address, not the www.whatever.com name. He is keeping his email at godaddy and the domain is registered there as well. If I set him up a hosting account, will the ip address forwarding work and resolve to his hosting account address www.rillarillarecords.com on my server, assuming I have him use the ip address I am using for the ftp accounts?
Thanks a million.

[monkette]

Yes, we had originally set him up a hosting account and he pointed his dns servers to the ones I use, but his boss thinks he knows everything and wants just to forward parked page to the ip address, so he switched his dns servers back to the godaddy ones and now wants the ip address. I'm not sure this would work. What do you think? I think he would need his dns servers to point to the ip address to resolve....

[Matt]

These can be problematic at times.

If you use your DNS then they move to your nameservers. Then you have to go into WHM and edit his DNS zne to forward the mail to godaddys mailservers, Then you have to make another special entry to forward the domain to the guy's IP address.

There is no point in doing that ubless you want to be a specialty DNS service like dnsmadeeasy.com or zoneedit.com.

Why they want to do that is usually a few things:

1. They are trying to spam your server or have other malicious intent.
2. They have an admin who has no idea what they are doing.
3. They have an admin who knows what they are doing, sort of, but has never simply used your service and is reluctant to try.

In any of the cases, it is hardly worth the effort do to the tweaks you have to do, and more importantly, fully understand what you are doing.

Doing it means you have to now support 3 different systems, no matter whose fault:

1. GoDaddys mail server
2. Their Admins web server
3. Your DNS server

When problems arise it takes ten million years to troubleshoot as opposed to hosting everything centrally, where you know your cPanel, and if you do not, we most certainly do. Trying to deal with errors from other server systems, waiting for other support departments to reply, and a "host" of other issues typically makes these sort of accounts highly undesirable unless they are paying a premium for the services, and are competent to troubleshoot problems themselves.

GlowHost will not host DNS for domains to point to other IPs, except in very special cases. We will do DNS email forwarding because many large business organizations have in house servers and prefer to deal with their email hosting locally.

But coupling these, I would not touch if it were me, just too many problems that can arise, and if they do arise, it is always your fault, usually resulting in a bad wrap for you no matter of whose fault it really is.

[monkette]

I appreciate the reply. Dropping the client was not a big deal and I'm hoping he doesn't call again, but I'm sure he will. I understood your posting very well, which brings me back to "Why would he want to point his godaddy parked page to my hosting numerical ip address, just to host the domain?...and would that work? He wants to:
1. keep registration at godaddy.
2. keep mail at godaddy.
3. host with me
I had already set him up after he changed his dns servers to mine and was just about to edit the zone file to point his mail back to godaddy but wasn't sure the ip forward from godaddy would work from his end. For the future, is this a normal practice or is he trying to do something scammy? (for the client end I mean). I do appreciate any response you can give as I am not yet professional and don't have too much experience with this type of hosting. Thanks!

[Matt]

It is impossible to say what his intentions are. He may prefer their mailing services over what you offer, and prefer your server software over GoDaddy's. He can keep it registered at GoDaddy, and keep mail at GoDaddy and Host the site files with you.

The easiest way to do it is have him use whatever DNS he has now on the domain from godaddy, then have godaddy change the A record to the IP listed next to his domain under list accounts in WHM and it should show fine.