DirectAdmin

[Oldiesmann]

Anyone here have any experience with DirectAdmin? I decided to play around with it a bit (separate Amazon Lightsail VM and a couple of domains I bought specifically for this purpose), but I can't get my domain to resolve at all. I already set up the nameservers at the registrar (specifying the IPs and all that), and added all the appropriate DNS records on the server, but it doesn't work and I just get "DNS request timed out" if I do an nslookup on either domain.

My experience is mostly with Plesk but I've been reading complaints from people about recent Plesk price increases and wanted to see if DA might be a suitable replacement if at some point I decide Plesk has become too expensive. Although it's not bad software, I certainly don't see myself picking it over Plesk anytime soon (not as many features, plus it doesn't support directly importing stuff from Plesk - I'd have to either move things over manually or set up cPanel/WHM somewhere, import everything from Plesk in WHM, then import stuff from there to DA). My license for DA doesn't renew again for about a month, so although I don't plan on keeping DA, I figure I might as well make the most of it.

[Skhilled]

Les and I used to play with itsome years ago. But sometimes I'd have problems with it too. Other times it worked just fine.

[Oldiesmann]

Doesn't seem to work no matter what I try, so I've given up. I deleted the VPS and related resources and canceled the subscription.

[Skhilled]

You never contacted support?

[Oldiesmann]

Since it's just a test I didn't think it was worth the trouble. Doing some more searching though, one old post on their forum from someone having similar problems suggests opening port 53 on the firewall for DNS, so I'll try that and give it one more test this weekend. I still don't plan on using it anytime soon (Plesk is better in my opinion), but since I've still got a valid license for a few more weeks I might as well.

[Oldiesmann]

Opening up port 53 seems to have been the solution. If I do an nslookup now it works. I've never had to do that with Plesk and don't think I ever had to do that with WHM either (but it's also been a long time since I've used cPanel/WHM).

[Skhilled]

After my last post I started to remember having numerous port issues. You got to make sure all ports are open for anything that you intend to use. I like using CSF firewall and have been using it for a number of years.