ServeTheWorld Tutorial Channel
Structured, practical tutorial series built from real-world customer cases.
New guides added every week.
Richard Sutherland
Beginner
A first WordPress site gets easier once you know what job the site is supposed to do. This tutorial helps you separate the differences between brochure sites, blogs, and stores and how you might choose to set each up differently.
- 10
- 2
- 7 min
Richard Sutherland
Beginner
WordPress and site builders can both get a site online, but they give you very different kinds of control. We look at what happens to your content in terms of flexibility and future options once the honeymoon period is over.
- 8
- 2
- 8 min
Richard Sutherland
Beginner
WordPress makes more sense when you understand all its moving parts. This opening tutorial explains how the software, hosting, themes, plugins, and database fit together, and why that setup gives you so much control.
- 8
- 2
- 10 min
Richard Sutherland
Advanced
DNS only works if the answers can be trusted. The final tutorial looks at what can go wrong, from spoofed responses to account takeover, and the protections you can put in place that do the most to reduce that risk.
- 39
- 1
- 12 min
Richard Sutherland
Intermediate
Most "DNS propagation" problems are really cache problems. Here, we show you how to tell whether the change is already correct at the source, which layers may still remember the old answer, and how to cut down propagation wait time.
- 50
- 11 min
Richard Sutherland
Advanced
Reverse DNS turns the usual lookup around and asks what name an IP address points back to. That matters most on servers, especially mail servers, where reputation depends on that answer making sense.
- 41
- 9 min
Richard Sutherland
Advanced
SRV records handle the services that need more than a hostname alone. They tell an app which server to use, which port to call, and how to choose when more than one endpoint is available.
- 56
- 9 min
Richard Sutherland
Intermediate
Email DNS has two jobs. It needs to get incoming mail to the right place, and it needs to prove your outgoing mail is legitimate. This tutorial covers both through the use of MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- 48
- 1
- 11 min
Richard Sutherland
Intermediate
Pointing a domain at a website sounds simple until the root domain and subdomains start behaving differently. This tutorial clears up when to use an A record, when a CNAME makes life easier, and how the pieces fit together.
- 56
- 9 min
Richard Sutherland
Intermediate
Changing DNS settings can feel risky, but only when you don't have a safe routine to follow. This tutorial walks you through the safe order of operations, from finding the right control panel to checking that the new record is really live.
- 41
- 10 min