Before Opterius can manage DNS for a domain, that domain's nameservers must point at your server. This is done at the domain registrar — the company where the domain was registered.
What "Pointing Nameservers" Means
A domain's registrar stores two things: which IP address goes with each nameserver hostname (glue records), and which nameservers are authoritative for the domain. When someone queries DNS for your domain, the global DNS system looks up your registrar's records to find which nameservers to ask — then asks them.
By setting nameservers to ns1.yourhosting.com and ns2.yourhosting.com, you're telling the world: "for any DNS question about this domain, ask those servers." Opterius (PowerDNS) then answers those questions using the records you've configured.
Prerequisites
Your Opterius server must have:
- Nameserver hostnames configured — set them in Server Mode → Settings → DNS (e.g.,
ns1.yourhosting.com,ns2.yourhosting.com) - Glue records registered — at your hosting company's domain registrar, you must register IP addresses for
ns1andns2. See Glue Records.
Steps
- Log in to the domain's registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, etc.)
- Find the domain's nameserver settings (usually under "DNS" or "Nameservers")
- Set nameservers to:
ns1.yourhosting.com ns2.yourhosting.com - Save
The registrar propagates this change to the global DNS root servers. This takes anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours — the old nameserver records have a TTL that must expire before all resolvers see the update.
Verifying the Change
Once you've made the change, check that it's taking effect:
# Check what nameservers are currently reported for the domain
dig NS example.com +short
# Check that the Opterius server is answering for the domain
dig @ns1.yourhosting.com example.com A
If dig NS returns your nameservers but the A record doesn't resolve yet, propagation is still in progress.
Using Cloudflare as DNS Instead
Some clients prefer to keep DNS managed by Cloudflare (for CDN, DDoS protection, etc.). In that case, they don't need to point nameservers at your server — they add DNS records manually in Cloudflare, pointing to your server's IP. Opterius still manages the server-side configuration; it just doesn't handle their DNS queries.
In this case, you may want to disable automatic DNS zone creation for that account — contact info is in Settings → DNS.