Setting Up A Minecraft Subdomain For Your Server

Last modified on Jul 17, 2020 in general

By ApexHosting

Overview

A newly created Minecraft server starts off with a numerical IP address and port. These two values uniquely identify your server among thousands of others, so it’s important to note both when connecting to a server. The IP of a Minecraft server looks similar to 195.27.18.197:25749. Now as you can imagine, remembering this series of numbers can be quite the hassle. In response, users look to connect using a root domain or, more commonly, a sub-domain.

The difference between an IP and a domain is that an IP consists only of a series of numerical values like 195.27.18.197:25749 and a domain usually consists of a series of alphabetic values such as play.apexminecraft.com. When looking to connect using a domain you can use a sub-domain like play.apexminecrafthosting.com. Now in order to use either you must have rights to this domain by purchasing or being granted the privilege to use it by the owner. You can purchase your own unique domain from resellers online such as GoDaddy, Google, Namecheap, and many more. We will be walking you through the steps on how you can set up a sub-domain for your Minecraft server.

When setting up a domain for your Minecraft server, it is best that you use a dedicated IP. A dedicated IP is unique to your server and allows you to connect to your server without having to enter a port number. Apex Hosting offers dedicated IPs for select servers at a base rate of $4/mo in addition to your server plan.

How to create a subdomain

Nearly all domain registrars have the same configurations when it comes to setting up your domain/subdomain. As they are all very similar, we will cover how you can set it with GoDaddy.

Configuring/adding your subdomain

Click on your name to the top right of GoDaddy’s website, then locate “My Products” and click it.
On this page, you will see a section labeled “All your products and services”. Under this, look for “Domains”.
Under Domains, you are going to see a listing of all the domains you have on your account. To the right of the domain, click on “DNS”. On this page, you are going to see a section named “Records”. There are two records we will be adding, the A Record and the SRV Record.

A Record

In the records section, click “ADD” and choose “A” from the dropdown.
You are going to see a few required values that will have to be filled out.

Host: Defines the subdomain, e.x “play” in play.mydomain.com
Points to: Defines the IP address the A record should resolve to. This will be your Minecraft Servers IP address.
TTL: Defines the average time it takes for the changes to propagate.

You will want to first set “Host” to the subdomain you want. For example, if you put in “Play” for the Host, it will set it as “play.yourdomain.com”.
Next is “Points to”. You will want to set this to your server IP address (Not including the port).
After you set that, set the TTL to ½ hour. This will define the average time it takes for the changes to the domain records to propagate.

Here is an example of the end result:

SRV Record

After creating the A record, you will need to create an SRV (Service) record. This tells the A record what service port to resolve to when connecting with our sub-domain. While the A record points to the IP of the host the server is located on, the SRV record uniquely identifies to the intended service, in this case, the Minecraft server port.

In the records section, click “ADD” and choose “SRV” from the dropdown.
You are going to see a few required values that will have to be filled out.
Service: _minecraft
Protocol: _tcp
Name: The hostname of our sub-domain, in our case, it’s “play”.
Target: The full name of the sub-domain, e.x “play.mydomain.com”.
Priority: 0
Weight: 5
Port: The port your Minecraft Server is using.
TTL: Defines the average time it takes for the changes to propagate (lower is preferred).
The first value you will set is the Service. You will need to set it to “_minecraft”.
Next is the Protocol. This needs to be set to “_tcp”.
After is the name. This needs to be set to subdomain. We set it to “Play” in the A record, so it needs to be set to the same here.
Next is the Target, set this to the full subdomain. For example, “play.mydomain.com”.
After you do this, you will have to set the Priority to “0” and the Weight to “5”.
The port will be set to your Minecraft server port. The default Minecraft port is 25565, so if you have a dedicated IP that is what you will set. Otherwise, you need to add the same exact port provided to you on your Minecraft server. Assuming our Minecraft Servers IP is “123.145.3.23:25786”, the port would be set to “25786”.
The TTL will also be set to ½ hour as it was in the A Record.

Here is an example of the end result:

After all of these steps, simply wait for 30 minutes for everything to propagate and you should be set to join the Minecraft server with your new subdomain!

Common Issues

Not being able to join the server with the new subdomain
If you aren’t able to join the server after you configure everything above, there are a few things you need to check. The first is that you have waited the 30 minutes to allow the domain to propagate. If your server has a port, it is also good to make sure that you set the SRV record correctly as otherwise, you may have to connect with the domain and the port. For example, “play.mydomain.com:25575”. To avoid having to do that, you can use a dedicated IP address. And finally, make sure to double-check that everything has been entered correctly in the DNS records.

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