Its clear from the question what I want to know but i do want to explain the entire situation first.
My Goal: I want to set up multi domain hosting panel on my server. Mostly it will serve my own existing clients.
As of now i've many shared hosting plans for clients (Website hosting). I found that i can save lot of money by getting a single VPS instead of getting & paying for separate shared hosting plans. So satisfy same i thought of purchasing and setting up my own hosting solution.
1) I've purchased a Droplet from Digital ocean and wanted to setup centOS + CentOS Web panel for the same.
2) I've purchased domain from my domain registrar. say for ex. mydomain.com.
Now my confusion is regarding NS records and DNS configuration.
I wanted to know what should be my NS record, to be able to manage cpanel and multiple domain serving from same cpanel.
I want is my CWP – cpanel domain to be cpanel.mydomain.com.
I also want to have a hosting home page or small website setup on main domain mydomain.com.
So the questions are.
1) What should be the NS record of my main domain (mydomain.com) at domain registrars domain control panel. whether it should point to ns1.digitalocean.com or it should be custom dns record that should be created in CWP (for ex ns1.mydomain.com).?
2) I want my cpanel hostname to be cpanel.mydomain.com, so where should i add CNAME record, in Digitalocean DNS record or in CWP DNS record.?
3) What's the relation of droplet name in digital ocean, is it related to hostname of server?
4) What all A, CNAME and MX record will be needed at digitalocean DNS configuration and in CWP DNS configuration.
5) Do I need to add mydomain.com website in CWP, if yes then what should be its DNS configuration. As this will be needed if i want to setup a hosting landing pages for marketing purpose.
This is getting too much confusing now as if i add domain in CWP, there also need DNS configuration, then what should be its NS record? do i need it there also?
i'll add more to this question latter.
Anyone with already having experience of DigitalOcean+CWP can better explain this.
Best Answer
1) First of all, I will need to explain what is name server. The name server is the location of DNS server from where you can manage all your DNS records like A,MX,CNAME,etc. Domain provider and hosting control panel both provide option to host DNS service for your domain. You have few two options here. If you want to manage DNS records from domain control panel, you will have to use their default name servers. If you want to manage DNS records from hosting control panel (CWP), you will have to use custom name server pointing to your VPS IP address. Moreover, you can manage name server's from domain registrar's control panel only. If you set name server in CWP, it will not have any effect. Why it will not work? That is not our concern here so I will not go into the details here.
2) In order to access CWP using http://cpanel.mydomain.com, you will just need to create DNS A record for 'cpanel' pointing to your VPS IP address. One thing to note here, after pointing the domain name, you will have to add the port number in URL like "http://cpanel.mydomain.com:2030"
3) I never use digital ocean so I don't know this. But what I guess, it could be the VPS hostname. Generally, it is for identification purpose of your VPS.
4) I already have explained this in point-1
5) Yes, you will need to create a hosting account for your domain in CWP in order to be able to host landing page
To avoid name server's confusion, use the default name servers provided by domain registrar and use their DNS service. When you use the DNS service of domain registrar, any DNS configuration on CWP will be ignored, so you can leave it as it is.