--- title: "Vanity Nameservers: What are they and how do I set them up?" description: "A vanity nameserver is a name server that is branded to a website of your choice, instead of our public name servers. This can make your site appear more professional, by masking the fact you’re..." url: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/domain-names/dns-nameserver-changes/vanity-nameservers-what-are-they-and-how-do-i-set-them-up/ date: 2011-11-16 modified: 2021-11-04 author: "InMotion Hosting Contributor" categories: ["DNS and Nameserver Changes"] type: post lang: en --- # Vanity Nameservers: What are they and how do I set them up? A **vanity nameserver** is a name server that is branded to a website of your choice, instead of our public name servers. This can make your site appear more professional, by masking the fact you’re using our name servers. Setting up vanity name servers on shared hosting would be much different than running your own [custom name servers](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/domain-names/dns-nameserver-changes/using-custom-name-servers/) on either a VPS or dedicated server. As these run completely separate from our public name servers. With vanity name servers you are just hiding or masking the hostname of our public name servers, but the IP addresses and the physical servers handling your website’s DNS requests would still be our public name servers. - [Why Use Vanity Name Servers?](#why-use-vanity) - [Setting up Vanity Name Servers on Shared Hosting](#setup-vanity) - [Create DNS Records](#create-dns) - [Point Your Domain](#point-domain) - [Wait for Propagation](#wait) ## Why Use Vanity Name Servers? When you do a Whois lookup on your domain, or if you use our [domain routing tool](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/tools/visual-domain-routing/), anyone can see the name servers that your domain name points to. For instance if your domain was **example.com** here is what you’d see: **Before vanity name servers:** NS1.INMOTIONHOSTING.COM NS2.INMOTIONHOSTING.COM **After vanity name servers:** NS1.EXAMPLE.COM NS2.EXAMPLE.COM Using vanity name servers allows you to hide the fact that your website actually relies on our public name servers. ## Setting up Vanity Name Servers on Shared Hosting To setup vanity nameservers, you need to create two **A (address)** DNS records pointed at our public name server IP addresses. Typically you’ll point one for **ns1** and one for **ns2**, followed by your domain of choice, but the DNS records you create can be anything of your choosing, so long as you also register those hosts with your domain Registrar. ### Create DNS Records The steps below go over setting up vanity name servers on the **example.com** domain. Be sure to use your actual domain when you follow these steps yourself. 1. [Login to your cPanel](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/cpanel/how-to-log-into-cpanel/). 2. Under the *Domains* section, click on **Simple DNS Zone Editor**. 3. Select your domain name from the **Domain** drop-down. 4. Under the *Add an A Record* section, fill in these values:**Name:** ns1**Address:** 74.124.210.242When clicking off of the **Name** field, it will convert to the format *ns1.example.com*. 5. Now click on **Add a Record**, you should see a success message of:*Added Record ns1.example.com. > 74.124.210.242* 6. While still in the Simple DNS Zone Editor, under the *Add an A Record* section, fill in these values:**Name:** ns2**Address:** 70.39.150.2When clicking off of the **Name** field, it will convert to the format *ns2.example.com*. 7. Now click on **Add a Record**, you should see a success message of:*Added Record ns2.example.com. > 70.39.150.2* 8. After that, down under the User-Defined Records section you should now see:ns1.example.com. A 74.124.210.242ns2.example.com. A 70.39.150.2 ### Point Your Domain If you registered your domain name through InMotion Hosting you can use our guide on [changing your domain nameservers in AMP](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/domain-names/dns-nameserver-changes/change-domain-nameservers-amp/), to switch your domain from using our public name servers to your new vanity name servers. Otherwise you’ll need to let your domain Registrar know about the name server change, and you can follow our guides for [updating nameservers for domains registered elsewhere](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/domain-names/changing-your-domains-nameservers/#registered-elsewhere) if this is the case. You need to let them know that you’re trying to run name servers from your domain name. This typically involves going to a section in their control panel labeled something along the lines of **maintain name servers under this domain**, it can also be referred to as **domain hosts**, or **glue** records. ### Wait for Propagation Once you’ve registered your new vanity name servers with your domain Registrar, it can take 24-48 hours before they become fully active. After they’ve become active you can go ahead and point any of your other domains that you have hosted with us to these newly created vanity name servers, instead of our public name servers. Learn more about DNS management from our [Managed VPS Hosting Product Guide](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/product-guides/vps-hosting/). Give your small business a digital presence with our fast, secure [Shared Hosting](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/shared-hosting) solutions. Easily manage your websites with the industry-leading control panel on up to 20x faster web hosting that fits your budget.