Frequently overlooked and quickly needed.
WHY IT MATTERS
DNS records determine where your website and email go. Losing them means the site and mail stop working even though everything else is intact.
WHERE THEY LIVE
If your nameservers point at us, in the cPanel Zone Editor, and a full account backup includes them.
If they point at Cloudflare or another provider, they live there and no hosting backup includes them.
HOW TO RECORD THEM
Export the zone where the provider offers it. Cloudflare and most providers do.
Otherwise, take a screenshot or copy them into a document. It is a small list and rarely changes.
WHAT TO RECORD
A records for the domain, www and subdomains MX records, with priorities
TXT records: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and any verification records
CNAME records Any service-specific records
WHEN YOU WILL NEED IT
Migrating hosts Recovering after losing access to a DNS provider Recreating a zone that was deleted
HOW OFTEN
Whenever records change, and annually as a check.
