What do I need to set up my own domain name?

[NAS Newbie]

I've read through these threads, but still have some questions:

Recommendations on purchasing domain

I’m looking to purchase my own domain. Any recommendations on service providers? Anything that would easily work with Let’s Encrypt through synology nas?

www.synoforum.com

Question - Bought domain and need to link to NAS

Hello, Massive newbie question. I have bought a domain name (from Fasthosts). I need to point this towards my NAS. Is there a good step-by-step guide to this, anywhere? many thanks

www.synoforum.com

I don't currently plan on hosting a website, although maybe it'll happen someday. Mainly looking to move away from synology domain name. My requirements as I understand them:

-ability to have subdomains for use with different reverse proxies (bitwarden.domain.com, photoprism.domain.com).
-ability to use subdomains to access NAS at different locations (nas1.domain.com @ external IP x.x.x.x, nas2.domain.com @y.y.y.y). Neither of those IP's are fixed.
-wildcard SSL certs would be very nice
-must play nice with synology. I'd rather pay a bit more for an easy setup than monkey around with a lot of manual, back-door stuff for free.
-Question on this one: if I'm using a service such as no-ip for DDNS, do I still need to fill out a service in Synology Control Panel>>External Access>>DDNS?
-possibly hosting my own email in the future, not sure on that one though.

If I'm understanding everything, I'm leaning towards Dreamhost to provide the domain and no-ip for DDNS resolution. Will these providers fit the needs above? Will Let's Encrypt work with those providers, or do I need to find a new SSL provider too? Is there anything I'm missing?

 

[Gerard]

I used Google domains. It was really cheap for a .com domain ($12 a year). It also integrates with synology's DDNS. And had the capability of running a site on mydomain.com. So any services that I have all use sub domains to get to and mydomain.com points to google for a simple easy to use site. In addition I was able to redirect emails using email forwarding so [email protected] forwards to [email protected] email account.

Now some may frown upon using google due to privacy and how much data they collect from you. But for me i dont really care about this. We're all being tracked anyway in some regard. For me this is a really cheap price for the most amount of services/things I could do. YMMV

 

[NAS Newbie]

I had read your resolution to the thread above, but I personally would prefer to avoid the google machine as much as possible.

 

[Gerard]

I had read your resolution to the thread above, but I personally would prefer to avoid the google machine as much as possible.

Dreamhost would have been my second choice. They also had really good customer service.

 

[NAS Newbie]

Also, as I look through their websites, I see that no-IP sells domains as well. Is there a reason I wouldn't buy the domain through no-IP instead of dreamhost? Costs are fairly close after the first year.

 

[Telos]

I personally would prefer to avoid the google machine as much as possible.

Agree. That's why I have a NAS

 

[Gerard]

Is there a reason I wouldn't buy the domain through no-IP instead of dreamhost?

@Rusty maybe able to offer more insight on that one.

 

[Rusty]

Personally I use Dreamhost. It offered a good price for what I was looking for and never looked at some other options.

Regarding a choice of domain hosting provider 8 say just go with the one that fits your bill and offers the domain registration that you want.

After that I have moved the domain (DNS) to Cloudflare for the reason of getting my own LE wild certificate without having my 80/443 open. Running validation using CF DNS.

Ofc that later changed so I do have 443 open for RP needs but still.

So the way I see it is you can have all your needs met by running your own domain and use any ddns provider you want to compensate for not having a static ip address

 

[one-eyed-king]

I use netcup and pay less that 9€ per year for 3 .de domains (disounted of course). The fun part: the provider is directly supported by most letsencrypt clients and can be used for the DNS01-Challange. I use "owndyndns" (which is specificly created by someone else for this provider) to update my wan ip to the wildcard subdomain.

Though, like Rusty wrote: you can register at any provider and move the "technical part" over to Cloudflare.
From time to time you will find (sometimes even permanent) discounts on domain registration from the usual suspects. For instance, two of my domains cost permanently 1,86€ each per year.

 

[vivian]

I used Google domains. It was really cheap for a .com domain ($12 a year). It also integrates with synology's DDNS. And had the capability of running a site on mydomain.com. So any services that I have all use sub domains to get to and mydomain.com points to google for a simple easy to use site. In addition I was able to redirect emails using email forwarding so [email protected] forwards to [email protected] email account.

Now some may frown upon using google due to privacy and how much data they collect from you. But for me i dont really care about this. We're all being tracked anyway in some regard. For me this is a really cheap price for the most amount of services/things I could do. YMMV

This is exactly what I want to do (Have my domains through Google). I have followed so many blogs and so many videos. I am not sure what I have done anymore.
I am a little worried about port 80 to get the certificate and I am assuming I need to do every 3 months.

Any chance you can impart your wisdom a bit here?

 

[fredbert]

I am a little worried about port 80 to get the certificate and I am assuming I need to do every 3 months.

If you enable this then DSM and port 80 HTTP will be redirected to HTTPS...

Control Panel's Network tab and then DSM Settings.

As far as I can find, if you don't add specific custom HTTP ports in Application Portal for packages and Web Station virtual hosts then all these will automatically redirect to HTTPS. Also any Reverse Proxy rules for HTTP will remain as HTTP. It's also useful to enable HSTS.

HTTP Strict Transport Security - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You can test the actual web server response to http requests using the Mac Terminal and curl, e.g.

$ curl http://NAS_LAN_IP
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>302 Found</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Found</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="https://NAS_LAN_IP/">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>

And repeat for the domain names you've enabled for the NAS's web services.

 

[Gerard]

Any chance you can impart your wisdom a bit here?

When you get the cert is about to expire emails, you can just manually go in open port 80, renew the certs and then close 80 again.