Creating a Personal Nameserver -- WHM Side

Intro

Creating personal nameservers is a two step process. This guide describes how to make the necessary configuration changes on the cPanel/WHM side. In addition to this, you also need to ensure that the domain is configured properly at the registrar. Please see Registrar Configuration for info on how to complete this other step.

The cPanel/WHM Side

To setup a private (or personal) namesever on your cPanel machine, follow the steps below. If you are installing cPanel for the first time on your server, there will be a guided wizard upon your first login to aid you in creating your custom nameservers and you do not need to follow this guide. Please see this part of the cPanel installation guide for the initial walkthrough.

If you have any questions regarding the guided wizard however, you can refer to this article for reference.

  • Log on to WHM, go to Main » Server Configuration » Basic cPanel/WHM Setup from the menu on the left. Enter ns1.yourdomain.com in the Primary Nameserver field, which is about 1/2 way down on the page. Hit Assign IP Address1), then hit Add an A Entry for this nameserver2). Do the same for the Secondary Nameserver field with ns2.yourdomain.com.
  • Restart your nameserver (Named/Bind) service: Main » Restart Services » DNS Server (BIND).

Registrar Configuration

You will also need to register your nameservers with the provider from whom you bought your domain as mentioned at the beginning of this article. Please see the following article for a guide to do so with various registrars:

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1)
Assign IP Address will commonly hang if you have not made the appropriate registrar changes yet or these changes have yet to propagate. You will also need to place a check in the box for Disable whois lookups for the nameserver IP manager in Main » Server Configuration » Tweak Settings.
2)
If you only have one IP on your server, you will need to enable Allow Sharing Nameserver IPs in Tweak Settings.