#uk2.net

Don't use. I made a blog post around six months ago sort of praising them and while I haven't really kept up with the promises of having an active blog - i.e. at least a few posts a week I do have a website I want to keep alive. Zoneedit.com are managing my DNS as a way to bypass the premium service charged by uk2.net just so I can get tumblr to use my domain adamgarretty.com.

Zoneedit have been down several times in the last six months when I've noticed and probably even more than when I haven't. Their user interface isn't very easy for the layman and for me it's just another link to go wrong. Once I notice its normally around 24 hours before it's back up, if I was a super-blogger-who-relies-upon-zoneedit-to-make-a-living-guy then I'd be pissed, luckily I'm not.

The solution I've come up with is to eventually move everything including the domain to hostgator for the relaunch of adamgarretty.com. Hostgator hasn't been chosen out of any weighing up pros and cons of all hosting possibilities, but out of easy logistics for the person who is creating the new website. As always, do your research when you're looking into hosting - some are worse than others, some have features others don't have, jumping into the nearest convenience can cause future headaches is the lesson.

Must admit I didn't really check if tumblr and uk2.net would play nice together but I did check if tumblr would let me use my own domain - in fact I already knew it did but I still checked.  I went to uk2.net for my domain because I had used them before (although for hosting too) and never had any problems to speak of.

However, to get tumblr to use your domain you need to get your domain host to point at tumblr's IP.  I sort of assumed this would be a standard feature, turns out it isn't and leaves you with three options:

pay £20+ per year for this one "point my domain to this IP" option in uk2.net DNS management that is free with most other hosts (not much in grand scheme but kinda the principle and still way over the odds for this one option).

transfer your domain to someone who does have a DNS management included.  Costs would be involved with this but cheaper than option one.

use ZoneEdit.com (free service), change the nameservers to theirs with your host and then get them to point your domain tumblr's way.

I used option 3 and at time of writing still hasn't officially worked but I've confirmed the domain now does point the way of tumblr and I'm assuming probably just a few more robots to talk to each other first before it properly works.  ZoneEdit.com was a find via uk2.net support - a workaround.  But I can't recommend using uk2.net for tumblr at all.  Not sure what other hosts may have this problem but just check that a basic level of DNS management comes with your domain purchase and you *should* be ok.

additional 08/07/11 10:54.  adamgarretty,com was working last night and for at least a brief time this morning.  The uk2.net parts still seem fine and recognise that my domain is pointing to tumblr.  On zoneedit.com I have this status

"DNS Status:  Active in our DNS servers for web browsing. It will not be active for email until after the system has confirmed that the domain is resolving to our DNS servers. Our system will check this domain every hour."

Which is the same status as I had when I was waiting for the robots to finish talking.  Not sure what has changed, can begin to speculate I suppose but could be way off.  Domain is only 24 hours old though and a reasonable time frame to make sure all has settled will be 72 hours - so I will give it that but at least I know it can work.