Update as of 16 Nov 2020: The policy of DNS validation for .IE domain names has been discontinued. This article is no longer correct and will be kept only for archiving purposes.
It is a policy of the IE Domain Registry that, before allowing DNS nameservers to be applied to an .IE domain name, they will validate the setup of the domain name on your chosen DNS nameservers. This ensures there is web hosting properly setup for the domain name, which means there are few .ie domain names without any website/email compared to other domain extensions.
If you attempt to change DNS nameservers on a domain name, but the DNS setup cannot be validated by the IE Domain Registry, their registry system will generate a long message containing this error for each nameserver:
"ns1.yourprovider.host is not authorative for zone yourdomainname.ie
ns2.yourprovider.host is not authorative for zone yourdomainname.ie
ns3.yourprovider.host is not authorative for zone yourdomainname.ie"
This is easy enough to rectify. You simply need to setup the domain name with valid hosting on your chosen DNS nameservers.
At Maxer Host, this requires the domain name to be setup as 1) a cPanel hosting account 2) an addon domain or 3) an alias. The presence of the domain name anywhere on our hosting network will be enough for the domain name to be validated by the IE Domain Registry against Maxer Host's DNS nameservers (ns1.maxer.com, ns2.maxer.com, ns3.maxer.com).
If your web hosting is with another provider, you'll need to ensure the domain name is properly setup on their hosting system. If you're not sure how to do that, please discuss it with your hosting provider. Here is a sample question you could ask them: "I have a .IE domain name registered elsewhere and I want to use your hosting service. The .IE registry validate the DNS setup before accepting the new nameservers, so the hosting account or at least the DNS zone for my .IE domain must be setup first (without any exception). Therefore, how do I add a DNS zone for my .IE domain name on your hosting?"
Important: You must setup the DNS zone on your chosen nameservers BEFORE attempting to change the nameservers for your domain in the Maxer Host client area.
If your hosting provider insists that the domain name is properly setup on their hosting service, but the DNS nameservers are still not accepted, please check for any typos in the domain name, then point them toward this knowledge base article and the DNS check utility provided by the IE Domain Registry at https://console.iedr.ie/index.php?r=dnscheck/check
Updated by SP on 28/12/2022
