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Manage Your DNS Records

DNS records are special settings that change how your domain works. They control what people see when they visit your domain and allow you to connect your domain to third-party services such as an email provider.

This guide will show you how to add, remove, and change your domain’s DNS records.

Reasons for Editing DNS Records

You may want to edit the DNS for your domain if you are:

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As long as your domain is using WordPress.com name servers, you can manage the DNS from your WordPress.com account. If your domain is not using WordPress.com name servers, make any DNS changes at your registrar/DNS provider.

Viewing your DNS records

To view your DNS records:

  1. From your site’s dashboard, go to Upgrades → Domains to view all the domains associated with that site:
Your site domains
  1. Click on the domain and then click on DNS records:
The domain settings screen shows a summary of the information about the site domain, including registration date, auto-renewal state, and expandable components for name servers, DNS records, contact information, and domain security.
Domain settings
  1. You’ll see a list of the current DNS records. You can then click on Manage to make changes:
The DNS records component of the domain settings screen displays your site's current DNS records, along with a Manage button allowing you to add, edit, or remove these records.

Adding Custom DNS Records

You can add the following DNS records on WordPress.com:

To add a new DNS record:

  1. Select the Add a record button from the upper right corner:
"Add a record" button at the top right to add a new DNS record to the domain.
Add a record button
  1. Select the DNS record type from the Type dropdown.
Adding an A record to the domain. The 'Add DNS record' button is shown in pink.
Adding a new A record
  1. Fill in the remaining information obtained from the service you’re adding the record for. The fields available will change depending on the type of record you are trying to add.
Terminology Used

There is no standard set of words used for the different fields of a DNS record. Different providers may use different terminology for the various DNS fields compared to what you see on WordPress.com.

For example, you might be given this DNS record to add from your email provider:

TypeHostPoints To:
CNAMEemailemail.myemailserver.net

What this provider calls “Host” refers to what you see as “Name” in WordPress.com. This DNS record would be added like this:

Adding a CNAME record to a domain. The Type is set to CNAME.
Adding a CNAME record

Editing or Deleting DNS records

To edit or remove an existing DNS record, you can click the three dots next to an existing record, and select either Edit or Delete:

Highlighted Edit button to edit an existing DNS record.
Editing and Deleting DNS records

Default Records

Some records are created by default and their value fields show a “Handled by WordPress.com” message. These records have special behavior, depending on their type (A, CNAME, MX):

Enabling the “_domainconnect” Discovery Record

If your domain is using WordPress.com’s name servers, you will see an option to enable a particular DNS record called “_domainconnect”.

If you enable this record, you can connect to other services such as Microsoft Office 365, without requiring you to manually edit DNS records.

You can enable this record by clicking on three dots next to it and selecting the Enable option. Likewise, you can disable it by selecting the Disable option for the active “_domainconnect” record:

Enable option next to the domain connect record.
Enabling _domainconnect DNS record

TXT Record Character Limit

Our DNS editor allows up to 255 characters for TXT records.

If you are receiving an error that your TXT record is invalid or too long (such as for a DKIM record), check if there is an option to use a 1024-bit record from the service you’re trying to connect to.

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