As stated in my post titled Back with a Bang! (that title, still, amuses me), I have moved from WordPress to using Octopress on Github pages. I was happy with my new blogging configuration, and I think, I am on schedule with my post updates, till date. However, in making the switch, I messed up my email configuration while setting up custom domain for this blog. And, I was not even aware my emails were bouncing off, silently.

The nikhgupta.com domain is registered on Namecheap (which has been my reliable domain manager, since the very start), and is hosted on DigitalOcean (which is an amazin’ host and my recommendation, these days). I am using ZPanel, since cPanel is not a necessity for me (I would, rather, install the bare minimum on my servers).

I must say that this silent bouncing of my emails was my own idiocy, and therefore, I am writing this post to help anyone who may have gone through the same.

Custom Domain on Github Pages

This has, already, been discussed on this Github Help page, and therefore, I will not go in details. For summary:

• Create a repository on GitHub with the name of username.github.com.
• Next, clone the Octopress (or Jekyll) repository, and make changes, as required. My source for the website is in source branch, which is pushed to the same branch on Github, while my website (real HTML pages) are pushed to the master branch on Github. This is all managed by Octopress, by default.
• Once we push the site (or run bundle exec rake gen_deploy if using Octopress), our site will be viewable at http://username.github.com.
• Next, we add a file named CNAME to our source directory. This file is a simple text file that just contains one line, the domain name you wish to use. In my case, nikhgupta.com.
• Change the DNS settings for your domain to point to GitHub’s servers. Since, I was using the root domain name, I had to create A records for the @ and www entries, and point them to Github’s IP (204.232.175.78).

Ensuring that Email configuration works

Did you notice that last step? This is where I messed up my email configuration. The MX records in my DNS settings for this domain, were pointing to mail.nikhgupta.com, which in turn was pointing to @ entry.

Now, that is what is wrong! The @ entry was initially pointing to my server’s IP address, which meant that the incoming mails were being processed by my server.

When I changed the @ entry to point to Github’s server, I made Github responsible for managing my mails. Shit! Here is a snapshot for the change, I made:

Anyways, now, that I am aware of what is wrong, it is a simple fix. I made the MX records to point to mail.nikhgupta.com (this was the default), but also made mail A-record to point to my server’s IP address (by adding an A record).

Below are snapshots for my A and MX records, in their current state:

Finally, since I am using DigitalOcean server, I also needed to point the same A-record to the server’s IP using the management console provided by DigitalOcean.

Now, I only had to wait to let the DNS propogate, and my emails were right back to where they belonged. :)

Update (05.11.2013): It seems that I also needed to point out MX record inside DigitalOcean’s DNS settings to mail.nikhgupta.com. to make this all work.