This article is really only relevant to customers using our Reseller Hosting plans where we offer private label name servers as one of the features.
By using a private label name server it means your name servers are branded under your own domain instead of ours. This is important for customers reselling our services because it means that Rochen remains completely hidden from their own clients.
When you setup a regular (non-reseller) web hosting account with Rochen we will send you a welcome email with your account information. As part of that welcome email we will ask you to point your domain name towards our name servers. E.g. ns1.rochenhost.com and ns2.rochenhost.com. After pointing your domain to our name servers then it will resolve to your new Rochen account within 24 to 72 hours.
However, with our range of Reseller Hosting and Premium Reseller Hosting plans we provide you with private label name servers. Therefore, your name servers will be ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com instead of ns1.rochendns.com and ns2.rochendns.com, as an example. You can not simply point the domains you wish to host towards ns1.yourdomain.com and ns2.yourdomain.com straight away though, because these name servers will not exist yet. These name servers need to be created first and this is where the part of registering your name servers comes in.
You can register your private label name servers with your domain registrar using the IP addresses provided to you in the welcome email for your Reseller Hosting or Premium Reseller Hosting account. Your domain registrar should have an option such as “Register Name Server” or “Register Hostname” within their control panel. Some domain registrar will require you to contact their support team in order to register your name servers.
Name servers only have to be registered once and in the case of customers using our shared name servers such as ns1.rochenhost.com and ns2.rochenhost.com we have already taken the time to register these for you. With the private label name servers that come with our reseller plans though we can not register these for you as we have no control over your domain name. Therefore, you need to handle this with your domain registrar directly. We are however more than happy to give you assistance and point you in the right direction should you require.
So to summarise, essentially the difference between registering a name server and pointing a domain towards a name server is that when registering a name server you are physically creating the name server and when pointing a domain towards a name server you are directing that domain to a name server which has already been registered. Before you can point any domains towards a name server the name server must be valid and registered first. This is the most likely reason that a domain registrar would throw up an error such as “Invalid Name Server” because it has not been registered yet.
Any customers having problems registering name servers may find it useful to take a look through the interactive walkthroughs contained within this section of the Knowledge Base (KB) which show you step-by-step how to register private label name servers with many popular domain registrars. E.g. Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Dotster etc.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any further clarification