Parking domains and DNS question
I currently have 3 different sites on different host accounts. Each site has additional domain names parked on them. Just variations on the name (if the site is "mydomain.com", the parks are "mydomain.net", "my-domain.com", and "my-domain.net"). I don't care if they are real parks (showing the alternate name in the browser) or just redirects to the the primary name.
I'm thinking about combining these into one Pro-Phase account at MidPhase, which I believe allows up to 4 sites/domains. But additional "domain pointers" are $2/month. That seems a bit much to add half a dozen lines of text per domain to a DNS server. (my current host charged a one time $20 fee per park) That would mean paying an extra $18/month for 8 parks.
The domain names are all registered with netsol (don't want to change that), and from what I can see they allow me to edit the DNS records there. (not just point to a new DNS server, but actually edit the record on their DNS server) They also have URL forwarding for $12/year, which is 1/2 what MidPhase is asking.
I'm thinking that my best option is to pay MidPhase for a static IP address at a $15 one time fee and then change the A-records on the netsol DNS server to point to that IP. I'm assuming I would have to buy 3 IPs for the 3 sites (haven't asked MidPhase about that yet). But since netsol allows DNS edits for free, that would end up with a one time $45 fee for the static IPs. That beats the $216/year for the MidPhase pointers, or the $108/year for the netsol URL forwarding.
I'm not clear about Cnames, so don't know if that would allow me to use a single static IP and alias the other 2 sites on the same server. (and if so, will they still have the individual domain names when somebody browses to one?)
Any other ideas on parking 9 additional domain names on top of the 3 main names in an account like this? Does my method seem like the best & cheapest way to go? Any potential problems?
