How can I point a Google Sites URL to a different host?

Question

I have a Google Sites partnership with some Premier Edition accounts. Currently, my domain [www.foobar.com] points to a WYSIWYG-managed site "Powered by Google Sites." I want to keep routing my e-mail [mail.foobar.com] through the Google Sites suite, but I want to run my actual homepage through something like DreamHost.

How can I manage the DNS entries for foobar.com and www.foobar.com to make sure they go to my third-party hosting service rather than to Google Sites?

Answer 1

What Alex has said is correct, but just to clarify a bit more:

When you set up your domain, you will have entered some Name Servers (a minimum of 2 usually). These nameservers you entered (they usually look like ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com), they are your DNS servers.

You will need to configure your DNS servers to route your normal TCP/IP traffic to your commercial host, and your email traffic to your Google account.

This is easilly done.

In your DNS you will have a few types of records:

• A Record - this maps a name (domain/subdomain) to an IP Address
• CNAME Record - this maps a name to another A record
• MX - this maps your email to an A record

So! What you will need to do is:

• Set your A record to point to your commercial hosting provider (use their IP address)
• Your 'WWW' record should be a CNAME pointing to the A record, but if it is not, also update your WWW record to point to your commercial host.
• Set your MX record to point to the Google servers that they gave you

This way, all normal traffic will be routed to your commercial host, but your emails will still flow to your google account.

Answer 2

The registrar (the site service that registered the domain) will have a control panel that allows to to set the DNS records and point hostnames to different servers.

The exact instructions vary by registrar.

You can find out the registrar by looking up the domain name in WHOIS.

Answer 3

Keep your mx records for the domain at the settings that Google supply, to keep email heading there, but alter the normal web-site domains to point to the new hosting IPs.

Google actually have explanations for how to change the DNS settings for a couple of different major registrars, including GoDaddy.