Setting Up Domain Parking and Redirects Without Changing Nameservers.

Learn to set up domain parking pages and redirects without altering your nameservers, maintaining email functionality and control.

What is a DNS NS record?

NS stands for ‘nameserver,’ and the nameserver record indicates which DNS server is authoritative for that domain (i.e. which server contains the actual DNS records). Basically, NS records tell the Internet where to go to find out a domain’s IP address. A domain often has multiple NS records which can indicate primary and secondary nameservers for that domain. Without properly configured NS records, users will be unable to load a website or application.

Many domain owners seek the benefits of using parking pages from platforms like DAN, Sedo, GoDaddy, and Afternic to monetize or sell their domains. However, they face a common dilemma: leveraging these services without altering their domain’s nameservers, ensuring they can manage emails and other DNS settings directly. This guide provides a comprehensive solution to utilize parking pages effectively while retaining control over your nameservers.

Here is an answer to the question you may have:
How to have the landing page on DAN work and appear to visitors of domains, without pointing to DAN as my Name Server?
How to redirect a URL for a domain?
How to Set Up a Redirect?
How can I configure parking pages without changing my domain’s nameservers to those provided by Sedo, Dan, Afternic, or GoDaddy?

Understanding the Challenge

Traditionally, parking a domain with services like Sedo or DAN requires changing your domain’s nameservers to those provided by these platforms. While straightforward for parking purposes, this switch disrupts your ability to manage domain-related emails through your original hosting provider.

Prerequisites

Before diving into the setup, ensure you have the following in place:

1. A Cloudflare Account: Sign up for Cloudflare if you haven’t already. It’s a crucial tool for managing DNS settings while taking advantage of its security and performance features.
2. Domain Name Setup: Your domain must be purchased and either transferred to or managed by Cloudflare. This guide assumes your domain is already added to your Cloudflare account.
3. Domain Verification: Verify your domain with your chosen parking service provider (e.g., DAN, Sedo, GoDaddy, Squadhelp). This often involves adding a TXT record for verification, which you can do directly in Cloudflare.
4. A Parking Page: Choose a parking service provider that offers a visually appealing and functional parking page. Ensure you have access to the necessary DNS settings or IP address required to point your domain to this parking page.

The Solution: Custom DNS Records

You can modify specific DNS records to point to the parking service’s landing page, all while keeping your nameservers intact.
Here’s how🤔

1. Go to CloudFlare and find your domain name in the search bar

2. Find on the left side DNS

3. Let’s add A type record with Name: your domain name and IP address 192.0.2.1 and save. Use the IP “192.0.2.1” as a placeholder when adding an A record in Cloudflare. It’s a necessary step to set up a redirect with Cloudflare’s Page Rules

4. Let's add the second record CNAME with the Name www and Target your domain name

5. The final view of the two records will look like in the picture below

You’re done with DNS records. Go to redirect rule

1. Go to the Rules -> Page Rules -> Create Page Rule

How to redirect a URL for a domain?

2. Create the rule for redirecting any typing *yourdomainname.com/* to the https://WhateverYouWant.com. The asterisks (*) are wildcards representing any path or query after or before the domain. You can adjust based on your needs.

How to Set Up a Redirect

And the final result is if the user types codiego.com or www.codiego.com or http://codiego.com/ or even httpS://codiego.com/ it will redirect him to the https://dan.com/buy-domain/codiego.com beautiful Sale/Parking page.

Your Own Domain For Sale Page

You can redirect your domain name not only DAN parking page but to whatever you want a domain name.

This solution allows you to keep NS in CloudFront (or any other domain provider) and have a Sale/Parking page on the domain name.

P.S. Don’t worry if the URL does not redirect immediately after setting up because it takes some time( ~ 10 min ).