Web hosting fits into that category of software like Git. So many people expect it to be simple that they're tricked into thinking it is and being upset that there isn't someone there to hold your hand.
If you don't know the difference between a CNAME and an A record, then hire someone to register your domains and setup them up, or learn enough to make informed decisions. The rash things that people do because the Internet enables them to does not excuse them.
edit: Sigh, at least tell me why you're downvoting so I know what to address.
Yes, but if you do hire somebody else to setup your domains make sure the domains are associated with a registrar account that you control. If necessary delegate nameservers but not the domain itself. Best is to do the registration process yourself.
When I was doing websites, the number of times somebody had a previous domain "registered" by their previous web developer who had the domain associated with his godaddy account.
This means of course that when you want to stick the new website up you can't without contacting the previous developer who is either very uncoperative or has flat out disappeared.
The process to resolve this is such a pain and has to be carried out usually by the person who will be the benefactor of the domain who has no idea about authorisation codes, DNS delegation or any of this stuff.
I sincerely hope you weren't getting downvoted for that second paragraph because it's quite true. If you do not understand the most basic operation of DNS, then you have no business getting into the registrar game and would do well to hire someone to manage it for you.
I didn't downvote, but if I did, it would have been for the part about Git. It's (IMHO) a very poor comparison. Git is easy to use to a point (centralized, just push/fetch), then it becomes an order of magnitude (or more) harder. Also, everyone I know that doesn't use Git (i.e. stuck on SVN) is scared to death of it because they're scared of the decentralized aspect - definitely no one thinks it's going to be easy.
Even if it were hard to use, it remains an apples and oranges comparison.
It's easy to go buy a domain and hosting on GoDaddy.
Running at EC2 scale, managing your own nameservers, etc is hard.
I still don't see the difference. People think that since they can do the first, the latter should be automatically easy, or they're entitled to it because the ramp up was easy. Pretty much how the Git conversation plays out.
> edit: Sigh, at least tell me why you're downvoting so I know what to address.
Sorry for the meta comment, but this the second comment and all the replies are speculation why it was downvoted. Maybe someone misclicked, maybe someone wanted their own comment up so they downvoted all other comments. Many of the top comments in a thread get downvoted first.
Just a guess, but I'd say you're getting downvoted because of your second paragraph:
> If you don't know the difference between a CNAME and an A record, then hire someone to register your domains and setup them up, or learn enough to make informed decisions. The rash things that people do because the Internet enables them to does not excuse them.
Why in the world would anyone take issue with that? Especially here on HN of all places? I mean, sure, I can see exceptions for non tech savvy people running a personal site or a really small business website not having to know the difference but are we so pedantic that you have to explicitly point out all edge cases and exceptions in our comments now? Sheesh. The message was pretty clear and there was nothing downvotable about it.
Not sure. I agree with the second paragraph. I am guessing it's because of the "tone" of the text. This is a generalization, but I think comments here are downvoted not because they are wrong, but because people do not like the way they "sound."
I promise it wasn't meant as elitism. If someone were to think that knowing DNS makes them elite... well, that's unfortunate.
My point was much simpler, know when to outsource it to a third party or someone you hire, if you don't know the details of what you're getting into. Especially when it's something as fundamental as the ONLY entrance point people have to your business's online presence.
This is the same criticism that was leveled last time. What do people want? Yes, I wish DNS was magically simple. It's not. It's not going to magically be easy and downvoting me doesn't change that.
It's like me trying to do anything besides changing the wipers and oil in my car. It's right there in my garage and I certainly have the tools to work on it. (To be fair, me working on my car poses more physical risk to me than a novice breaking their DNS settings or being held "hostage" by a hoster/registrar).
If you don't know the difference between a CNAME and an A record, then hire someone to register your domains and setup them up, or learn enough to make informed decisions. The rash things that people do because the Internet enables them to does not excuse them.
edit: Sigh, at least tell me why you're downvoting so I know what to address.