Today, at approximately 2pm EST the Elite Hacker Anonymous Own3r took down the mighty Godaddy. This included millions upon millions of websites hosted there. As well as 100’s of millions of DNS entries that Godaddy maintains. Other services such as email are also down. (cnn article)

So, I guess now is a perfect time to explain the benefits of 3rd party DNS services, my favorite being DNS Made Easy. I currently have 500 domains with DNS hosted at DNS Made Easy.

Anyway, to explain this all better:

If you separate your DNS from your registrar, ie. Godaddy it will be much safer. When Godaddy would have gone down, your sites would have stayed up. Assuming your websites are not at Godaddy, just your domain. Think of it as keeping an important egg out of the proverbial basket.

So, how do you move your DNS to a 3rd party like: DNS Made Easy?

Simple:

1. Go here: DNS Made Easy
2. Click “Give it a Try” or “See Pricing” at the bottom of the site.
3. Select the Small Business Program, it costs $29 a year. It includes 10 Domains to maintain DNS for. Small price to pay for better uptime.
4. Complete as needed

Once your account is created, you will then add the domains you wish to monitor. Make certain to add any of your DNS entries from your previous vendor to the entries within DNS Made Easy. If want to have them added in before you change everything to limit any downtime.

Once, the domain is added in DNS Made Easy, it will provide you with a number of new Name Servers. These are addresses that you need to inform Godaddy or any other registrar of. Once you swap the name servers at Godaddy with these new ones… within 24hrs (normally a lot less). Your domains DNS will move over to DNS Made Easy.

From there on out you will want to manage all DNS at DNS Made Easy.