Suggestions for guides on all this DNS, CName, A Records stuff

[nudone]

I consider myself a "designer" (with the prefix of "web" I suppose), but the person that pays my wages likes to think I'm something more; which means he's always asking me to set up someone's domain on a host somewhere with the assumption I know what I'm doing. I do remind him that I don't know what I'm doing but he doesn't care - he can always set things up himself if he really has to; he'd just rather not have the bother.

I'd like to fully understand all this nameserver stuff, then I can at least understand what this bloke is saying when he starts going on about the A Records need changing to work with Google Mail (or whatever).

The problem is, I've tried reading a few guides but they aren't brain-dead enough for me to get a full mental picture of how everyting works. I need something that is patronisingly obvious (if possible) so I can see how all the dots connect.

It's like, I know enough to fill the the boxes to set something up, but I've no real idea of what's going on behind the scenes. If there's a problem with configurations, I'd like to be able to spot them or understand why they are so.

Are there any suitable guides or is it the kind of thing that will just make sense one day (maybe I've not made enough mistakes yet to form a picture of what's right or wrong).

Thanks.

[justice]

You're not saying which guides you have tried so I am going to point you to a good one and hope that it works for you:
http://library.linod.../introduction-to-dns

[nudone]

Thanks, justice. Well, when I say guides, I mean I've read things like wikipedia and any kind of stuff I can find on things like the Hosts or Domain Registers "help" pages.

I'll let you know how I get on with the link. 

[Antonimo]

Practical experience is a good teacher. If you can, get a domain to "play" with and a simple reseller hosting package. Even better if you can get a dedicated server, but that would mean learning all about the server too.

A cheap reseller hosting with WHM/cPanel is a good place to start. You can cancel most of them with a month's notice but you will have the chance to play around with a real domain.

With cPanel you can also get a lot of support from their user forums. Then, there are plenty of sites that help you to look u+ information about DNS such as http://www.intodns.com

[nudone]

Thanks, Antonimo, I'll check out your suggested link. (I've already got access to lots of domains, hosts and things like WHM and cPanel (and others); I've been messing around having to configure things for a few years but I just follow the same old routines without really knowing what's going on underneath - which is why I would like to know a lot more.)