I recommend NameCheap for domain registration. It’s inexpensive, easier to use than the other domain registrars, and they don’t trick you with upsells.
Setting Up Email Forwarders
It’s easy to set up email forwarders for your domain name in NameCheap, as long as you don’t have email set up for that domain elsewhere (i.e. with Google Apps). In order to take advantage of the free NameCheap email forwarders, you need to have your MX records pointing to NameCheap. But if you’ve got your email for that domain set up elsewhere, then you need to set up your email forwarders in the other system.
When you click to manage your domain in NameCheap, scroll down the page and you’ll find a section called “REDIRECT EMAIL”. There you can add new email forwarders.
The “Alias” is the address you want to forward from, which always ends in “@yourdomain.com”, and the address you’re forwarding to can be any valid email address.
You can also designate a “catch-all” email address, which is strongly recommended. If anyone tries to send an email to a non-existent email address on your domain, then their email will go to your “catch-all” email address. This is useful in case they mistype your email address, or you give them an email address that you forgot to set up a forwarder for.
Changing Your DNS Records
When you click to manage your domain in NameCheap, scroll down the page and make sure the “NAMESERVERS” section is set to “NameCheap default.” If not, then you’ll need to change it to “NameCheap default”. Note: be sure you want to do this, as it will break the links to where your website, email, etc. currently point to. If you need to keep some of the existing DNS records intact, you’ll need to copy them and re-add them once the nameservers are pointed back to NameCheap.
Once the nameservers are pointed to NameCheap, you can click on the “Advanced DNS” tab. There, you can add, edit, and delete records.
If you want the non-www domain as your main domain, then find the record with the Host value of “@”. If that doesn’t exist, then add a new record and set the Host value to “@”. Make sure the Type is set to “A Record”. The Value is the IP address of the web hosting server. If you’re hosting with EfficientWP, that IP address is “66.175.208.10”.
If you want to redirect the www subdomain to the main domain (recommended in most cases), then find the record with the Host value of “www”. Make sure the Type is set to “CNAME Record”. The Value is your domain name, without the “http://” and with a period at the end (i.e. “yourdomain.com.”).
