Masto.host DNS settings

To get started with your DNS settings

First, you should to go to the website of the company you used to register your domain and login.

Then you need to find the settings for your domain and you should have an option to edit DNS. This will be where you need to add the DNS settings found bellow.

The DNS settings

Your DNS settings will be different if you are using a root domain or a subdomain.

What is a root domain?

The domain name without www or anything else before the domain.

example.com is a root domain
example.co.uk is a root domain

Everything else is a subdomain.

www.example.com is a subdomain
mastodon.example.co.uk is a subdomain
social.example.com is a subdomain

Click bellow to see the settings.

If example.com was the domain the settings would be:

Please adapt to use your domain where it says 'example.com'

NAME: @ (or example.com)

RECORD TYPE: A

TTL: 300 (seconds)

VALUE: 178.33.220.142


NAME: @ (or example.com)

RECORD TYPE: A

TTL: 300 (seconds)

VALUE: 176.31.213.231

The TTL value is optional and you can set it to 'auto' or go to the closest you can to 300 seconds (5 minutes).

The name usually is just the symbol: @

Look for any other values, such as AAAA records or CNAME that use @ or your domain in the name field and remove them.

Be aware that if you have a website or anything else that is currently using that root domain it will stop working.

If social.example.com was the subdomain, the settings would be:

This is an example that uses the sudomain social.example.com. The value in Name will change depending on the sudomain you chose. Eg: if you were to use mastodon.example.com the Name value would change to: mastodon, or if you chose jimmy.example.com the Name value becomes: jimmy

social (or social.example.com)

RECORD TYPE: CNAME

TTL: 14400 (seconds)

VALUE: vip.masto.host.

(the dot in the end is not a mistake, it's required in some DNS management tools)

The TTL value is optional and you can set it to 'auto' or go to the closest you can to 14400 seconds (4 hours).

Look for any other values, such as A records, AAAA records or CNAME that use 'social' in the name field and remove them. Again the 'social' value will change depending on the subdomain you are using.

Thoughts on domains and Mastodon

Currently Mastodon doesn't support domain changes. Changing the domain/subdomain of an instance will partially break federation (remote connections to other instances that you are already connected to). So, think well before starting your instance on the domain/subdomain you want to use.

One thing to keep in mind, when you are thinking about what domain to use, is that your username (and the username of others that register in your instance) will become the username chosen + the instance domain/sudomain (eg: @myname@example.com or @myname@social.example.com).

Mastodon supports using a different domain for the installation than the one you want your usernames to be. But that will require some changes to the domain to use for username and that can be a bit complex. You can read about how to set that up here.

Any questions or issues just email me: info@masto.host

IPv6 support for root domains (optional)

Currently OVH doesn't offer portable IPv6. As such if you are using a root domain I cannot give you an IPv6 address that I can move to a different server without requiring DNS changes.

If your DNS provider allows for a CNAME (or ANAME or ALIAS) in root domains, you may use: vip.masto.host. and remove the A records.

I will keep vip.masto.host CNAME with the updated IPv6 addresses. That is the only option to get IPv6 support for instances installed using root domains and hosted in Masto.host.