We have recently released two new features that make it easier to utilize Section’s CDN for your website. There are two requirements to start serving traffic over Section:
- Changing your DNS
- Uploading your HTTPS certificate
With new Section features, we’ve streamlined the process so it’s easier to get setup and easier to manage once you are setup. For more information on our new feature for automated HTTPS certificates, read our announcement.
Announcing Hosted DNS
Until now, you’ve needed to go to your current DNS provider and create a CNAME record to point to Section. If your provider did not allow you to point at bare domain, or required you to point at an IP address, this presented problems for you. In the past, we’ve resolved these problems by created redirects which can add time to your page load and also hurt SEO for your website.
With our new hosted DNS you can now host your site directly on Section. This allows your bare domain to point directly to Section without the need for redirects, reducing overall page load times. You can also now manage your DNS records and TTL from directly within your Section portal, removing the need for one more website to visit to manage your website.
Why should I use Section’s Hosted DNS?
Section offers a globally distributed hosted DNS service leveraging a highly scalable Anycast network. Section Hosted DNS is fast to setup, easy to manage, and offers performance and security benefits to your website. This service is included as part of all Section accounts.
Fast to Setup
Section provides you with an easy DNS hosting option that gives you the confidence your website is in good hands, without having to dedicate unnecessary time and effort to getting started. With Section, we make it easy to setup and offer a reliable and globally distributed Anycasted DNS network so you can spend time running your business.
Immediate Access: With hosted DNS, Section can get your website up and running quickly on our CDN so you can start seeing performance benefits immediately. Avoid spending time creating and managing CNAME records at a separate DNS hosting provider by hosting directly with Section. Simply update your nameservers at your domain registrar where you purchased your domain and we’ll take care of the rest.
Globally Distributed DNS Network: By setting up your website on our hosted DNS service, you’ll be set up on a globally distributed Anycasted network. With 24 PoPs located across 6 continents, we ensure your website will be available to your customers no matter where they are. By routing your DNS queries to the closest data center, we also make the experience fast.
Easy to Manage
We’ve streamlined the process of managing your DNS so you can easily manage your account using our user-friendly interface. All routing and configurations for your DNS and CDN will now be accessible in one place, giving you full control and transparency into the backbone of your website.
Simple Record Management: Within our user-friendly interface, you can add, edit, and remove multiple record types as the needs of your business change. Supported record types include A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and ALIAS/ANAME. Easily view your existing records from directly within the platform without having to log in to another system.
TTL Control: Easily change the time to live (TTL) for each of your DNS records within your account, giving you full control of how your DNS changes propagate across our Anycasted DNS network. With TTL control access in Section’s platform, now all your website caching configurations, including DNS, browser, and edge proxies, can be managed in one place.
Website Benefits
Not only is Section’s hosted DNS service fast to setup and easy to manage, it provides critical benefits to your website.
Fast Performance: Section is known for providing performance benefits to your website, and hosted DNS is one more way we can make your website faster. By hosting your DNS with us, you eliminate creating redirects needed with a CNAME record. That means your website visitors are directed directly to your website without a redirect and therefore see faster page load times.
Optimized for Search Engines: Another benefit of removing a redirect needed with a CNAME, is that your traffic is directly accessing your website without www. in front, so you won’t lose any SEO earned if you’ve chosen to send your traffic there. This means you no longer need to choose between marketing and performance, you can have both.
Secure Service: Using Section hosted DNS allows us to easily validate your site and provide a SSL/TLS certificate to encrypt your application data over HTTPS. This means you won’t need to purchase your own certificate or manually provide the key information to ensure your site is secure.
To start improving the performance of your website or get started with DNS hosting, contact our team of experienced engineers today. If you already have an account, checkout out documentation to get setup.
