Move primary domain hosting from GoDaddy, but keep email & subdomains there w/ non-GoDaddy registrar

Given a domain registered through DotRegistrar, with GoDaddy as the current host (shared hosting) I need to figure out how to move the hosting for the primary domain to another hosting provider (Force.com) but continue to use GoDaddy for email and for one or more subdomains to serve large media files that we can't store in Force.com.

Currently, we're using GoDaddy's DNS servers, but since GoDaddy is not the registrar, we can't access their domain management system, and can only add subdomains through the hosting control panel.

I think I kinda' know what to do, but I want to make sure I really get it before I start reconfiguring things! Any advice would be appreciated.

I think the steps are roughly...

1. Switch the primary DNS servers for the domain from GoDaddy's to DotRegistrar's.
   (perform remaining steps in DotRegistrar's DNS management system)


2. Add a CNAME record to set the canonical name of {our-domain}.com. to {our-domain}.force.com.


3. Add MX records for smtp.secureserver.net (priority 0) and mailstore1.secureserver.net (priority 10) to match what GoDaddy previously had for us.


4. Add an A record for each subdomain that should be hosted at GoDaddy, pointing to the same IP address that the top-level domain was pointed to before by the GoDaddy DNS.

Does this look right? Are there any gotchas I need to be aware of?

Answer

You've covered things pretty well there, apart from the redirection of your domain.com address to force.com. According the the RFC's you should not use a CNAME for the root record of your domain, so what you should really be doing here is creating an A record for domain.com, that points to the IP of your hosting at force.com, and configure that to serve pages for that URL.