Connecting a .pk domain to Shopify
Shopify asks store owners to point their domain at its servers using two DNS records, and that is exactly the step a plain .pk domain can't complete at the registry. With our DNS hosting, the process takes only a few minutes. First, change your domain's name servers to ours in your client area. Then, in our DNS panel, set the root domain's A record to the IP address shown in Shopify's domain settings, and point the www sub-domain with a CNAME record to your store's myshopify.com address. Back in Shopify, add the domain under Settings, then Domains, and click Verify connection once the records have propagated. Shopify will issue a free SSL certificate automatically, and you can choose whether visitors land on the www or non-www version. If you also use Google Workspace or another email service, add its MX records at the same time so mail keeps arriving while the store moves.
Connecting a .pk domain to Blogger
Blogger supports custom domains, but it requires CNAME records that the PKNIC registry panel doesn't allow you to create. Once your domain uses our name servers, open your blog's Settings in Blogger, choose Custom domain and enter the address with www in front. Blogger then displays two CNAME records: one pointing www to ghs.google.com, and a second, unique verification record that proves you own the domain. Add both exactly as shown in our DNS panel and save the setting in Blogger after a short wait. To make the plain domain without www work as well, add the A records Google lists for redirecting the root domain, then enable the redirect option in Blogger. Turning on HTTPS in the same settings screen gives visitors a secure padlock at no cost. Many Pakistani bloggers use this method to move an established blogspot.com address onto a professional .pk name without losing their posts, comments or search rankings.
Business email authentication: SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Getting email delivered to the inbox rather than the spam folder depends heavily on DNS. Whether you use Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho or our own hosting mailboxes, three TXT records do most of the work. SPF lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain, so receivers can reject forged messages. DKIM adds a digital signature to each email, with the public key published in DNS for verification. DMARC tells receiving servers what to do when a message fails those checks, and sends you reports showing who is sending mail using your domain. For a .pk domain, all three can be added in our DNS panel in minutes. We recommend starting DMARC in monitoring mode, reviewing the reports for a few weeks, and then tightening the policy. Banks, payment gateways and large customers increasingly expect these records, and they also protect your brand from scammers impersonating your email address.
TTL and DNS propagation explained
Every DNS record carries a TTL, or time to live, which tells resolvers around the world how long they may cache the answer before checking again. A TTL of 3600 seconds means a visitor's internet provider might keep using the old address for up to an hour after you change it. That's why DNS changes appear to take effect at different times for different people: nothing is broadcast; caches simply expire on their own schedule. You can use this to your advantage when moving a website or email service. A day before the move, lower the TTL on the records you plan to change to five minutes, make the switch, confirm everything works, and then raise the TTL again to reduce lookup traffic. Changes to name servers at the registry level take longer, because the registry's own records have longer cache times, so plan a name-server switch well ahead of any launch or deadline.
Name servers vs. DNS records: what changes where
It helps to know which settings live with the registry and which live with your DNS host. Name servers are recorded with PKNIC against your domain and simply say which DNS provider is authoritative for it; you change them in your domain management panel. DNS records, such as A, CNAME, MX and TXT, live with that provider and decide where the website, email and other services point. Once a .pk domain uses our name servers, every record is edited in our DNS panel, and any record left at the previous provider stops being used. That's why records should be copied across before switching name servers. Companies that run their own servers can also register child or glue name servers, such as ns1.yourcompany.pk, with IP addresses tied to their domain. We can register these with the registry on your behalf, so your hosting clients see your brand in their DNS settings rather than a third party's.
What DNS hosting is
Every domain needs somewhere to store the instructions that tell the internet where to send visitors, mail and other traffic — that's what DNS hosting provides. Instead of managing your own name servers, you point your domain at ours and manage every record from a single dashboard.
This matters in particular for .pk domain names: PKNIC's own registry doesn't support editing CNAME or A records directly at the registry level, which is what blocks a plain .pk domain from being pointed straight at a platform like Shopify or Blogger. Routing the domain through our DNS hosting instead gives you a normal, editable set of records, so a .pk name can be connected to those platforms the same way any other domain can.
Our anycast network
Our name servers answer from multiple points of presence rather than a single location, so a lookup is generally answered by the nearest available server. That shortens the round-trip for a first-time visitor and gives your domain resilience if any one location has a problem, since queries are simply routed to another point automatically.
Record types explained
The control panel supports the record types that cover almost every use case: an A record points a hostname straight at an IPv4 address; a CNAME aliases one hostname to another, useful for subdomains that should follow a main domain's target; an MX record tells the internet which mail servers handle email for your domain, in priority order; a TXT record holds arbitrary text, most often used for SPF, DKIM and domain-verification codes; and an SRV record advertises the host and port for a specific service, such as VoIP or messaging platforms that need more than a plain hostname.
DNS hosting vs. web hosting
This is a standalone DNS product, priced separately from web hosting. If you already host your website with us on a shared hosting, WordPress hosting or VPS plan, DNS management for that domain is already included at no extra cost — you only need a paid DNS hosting plan if you're pointing a .pk domain at a platform we don't host, such as Shopify or Blogger.