Several systems work together before a domain reaches a website. Understanding their roles makes DNS troubleshooting much easier.
- Domain registrar — the company that manages the domain registration. Registrar controls commonly include renewal, registrant data, authoritative nameservers, and DNSSEC DS records.
- Authoritative nameservers — the DNS servers the registrar delegates the domain to. They answer with the domain's authoritative DNS data.
- DNS hosting — the system that stores the active DNS zone. If a domain uses the cPanel server's nameservers, cPanel's Zone Editor can manage that zone.
- Web hosting — the server that stores and serves website files. Web hosting and DNS hosting can be on the same system or on different systems.
Editing a record in cPanel only affects public DNS when the domain is actually delegated to nameservers that use the cPanel-managed zone. If the domain uses third-party DNS, the public record must be changed at that DNS provider instead.
