Configuring MX Records to Dreamhost

Support
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1

I have a few personal sites on netlify, with my domains registered on Dreamhost. In addition, I run my email as forwarding only through Dreamhost. In the past this has worked flawlessly. Recently, they changed some DKIM setting and this has broken all email.

Here’s what I have:

  1. successfully deployed my sites, with DNS pointed correctly to netlify. My site works fine.
  2. added DNS records for Dreamhost’s email servers, according to their docs mx1.dreamhost.com etc.
  3. attempted to add the txt file with the “key” to netlify (this is what I think is going wrong)

When I add the txt file it keeps appending the domain name of my site to the end.

For example the name of my file is no longer example.com._domainkey but gets changed to example.com._domainkey.example.com

How can I prevent this?

2

Hey @Code2Empower

The domain key will always have the domain as the suffix. Some services automatically append the domain (e.g. example.com) so you only need enter keyname._domainkey while others require you to enter the whole key e.g. keyname._domainkey.example.com.

Looking at this documentation from Dreamhost, the key should take the form

dreamhost._domainkey

not with the domain as the prefix.

3

Thanks for the response @coelmay
That’s what I originally thought. However, I got this (below) email about a week ago, and cannot figure out how to match this new format.

We recently notified you about a change we are making to our DKIM DNS records that will impact your email delivery. These changes have now gone live and you may delete the following DNS record from your DNS provider:

Name/Alias Domain
dreamhost._domainkey

If you haven’t already, please be sure to add the following TXT record to your domain with your DNS provider as soon as possible:

Name/Alias Domain
example.com._domainkey

You can retrieve the new key for your domain in the Manage Websites page of your DreamHost panel, in the “DNS” section.

4

In either case (and as far as I am aware) a record will, and must, always have the domain as a suffix.

1 Like
5

I figured it out via trial and error.

The correct format is example.com_.example.com with the value being the entire key from the Dreamhost DNS panel, e.g.,
v=DKIM1; k=rsa; h=sha256; p=YourKeyHere

So, you would literally enter, example.com_ as the title in the netlify DNS manager.

1 Like
6

Thanks for coming back and letting us know, @Code2Empower! Glad everything is working for you now. :netlisparkles: