Domain Issues With Domain Forwarding

ecorliss

For the past year, I have had photos.ericcorliss.com forward to my http://corliss-photography.smugmug.com/ site. I have had the domain (Custom Host Name) setting under the control panel within SmugMug set to photos.ericcorliss.com as well. Everything was working fine and I have not changed any settings since the original setup.

Now, if you go to photos.ericcorliss.com you will get an error:

The requested URL "/", is invalid. (Firefox)

or

The Page Cannot be found. (IE)

Any suggestions? Like I said, nothing has changed. www.ericcorliss.com still works and it looks like all of my domain settings with GoDaddy are in order. My other subdomain forwards still work (mail, etc.).

Is this a SmugMug issue or a GoDaddy issue? Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,
Eric

ervwalter

My site is broken as well, so this appears to be a SmugMug issue:

http://photos.ewal.net

ervwalter

I sent an email to the helpdesk (and pointed them at this thread as well).

scphoto

I am having the same problem as well.

stevenchristy.smugmug.com and my custom domain is www.stevenchristyphoto.com.

S-Man

That's exactly what MINE does! It was working last night, and today, BOOM! Error!
www.SlickPix.net

:cry

Perhaps our "Pro" accounts got mixed in with the "Power" accounts or whatever it is when you have to type in the "BlahBlah.smugmug.com" address instead of a custom domain adress?

ervwalter

The SmugMug support folks answered with instructions on how to fix it. Read the following:

I'm sorry about your domain troubles. It seems as if you have pointed your domain with a CNAME to mynickname.smugmug.com . This may have worked in the past, but it's not something we instructed you to do. Please change your CNAME record to domains.smugmug.com instead. That'll fix your domain. In the past we asked you to point your CNAME to www.smugmug.com, but this will stop working soon.

Here are more details on how to setup your domain properly:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts

http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/CNAME+Custom+Domain+Name+Help

S-Man

This was the response to me- it may help others:

"I'm terribly sorry your custom Domain stopped working. The problem is
that even though your site worked before it was still incorrectly
configured. We made a change to the site recently that made incorrectly
configured sites stop working. The problem is that your domain has a
CNAME record pointing to yournickname.smugmug.com. It should be
pointing to domains.smugmug.com. We were unaware the change we made
would cause this problem.

In a nutshell, to set up the CNAME correctly you need the following:
Point a www CNAME record to domains.smugmug.com and an @ A record to
208.79.45.23

Do not put in the yournickname.smugmug.com address no matter how
tempting that may be. Do not use forwarding or redirects either. None
of these will work correctly.

records if there are any for your site. It will take 24-48 hours for
the changes to propagate around the internet...."

Barb

S-Man wrote:

This was the response to me- it may help others:

"I'm terribly sorry your custom Domain stopped working. The problem is
that even though your site worked before it was still incorrectly
configured. We made a change to the site recently that made incorrectly
configured sites stop working. The problem is that your domain has a
CNAME record pointing to yournickname.smugmug.com. It should be
pointing to domains.smugmug.com. We were unaware the change we made
would cause this problem.

In a nutshell, to set up the CNAME correctly you need the following:
Point a www CNAME record to domains.smugmug.com and an @ A record to
208.79.45.23

Do not put in the yournickname.smugmug.com address no matter how
tempting that may be. Do not use forwarding or redirects either. None
of these will work correctly.

records if there are any for your site. It will take 24-48 hours for
the changes to propagate around the internet...."

This is exactly what needs to be done. Thx for posting it S-Man.

If you have any problems, email the help desk. We'll get you sorted
http://www.smugmug.com/help/emailreal

Sorry for the inconvenience!

docwalker

Barb wrote:

This is exactly what needs to be done. Thx for posting it S-Man.

If you have any problems, email the help desk. We'll get you sorted
http://www.smugmug.com/help/emailreal

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Add Attn: Doc to the subject so that I see it. I will be working on these tonight and for as long as needed. I will need your domain host, login, and password to make the changes if you want me to do it for you.

S-Man

Let me just say, that I believe the SmugMug crew has some of the best customer support- anywhere. And look, they're even working on Sunday...Way to go guys, you're the best!

ecorliss

You guys are amazing! Thanks!

docwalker

For anyone just now finding this problem, here is what I am sending in response. If you can follow these steps, it will fix the problem. Or send the requested information and I will fix it for you.



Thank you for contacting SmugMug. I'm sorry about your domain troubles.
It seems as if you have pointed your domain with a CNAME to
yournickname.smugmug.com . This may have worked in the past, but it's
not something we instructed you to do. Please change your CNAME record
to domains.smugmug.com instead. That'll fix your domain. In the past we
asked you to point your CNAME to www.smugmug.com, but this will stop
working soon. You will also want to change the IP address for any A
record you have pointed at SmugMug (the old IP is 63.81.134.23) as that will also be changing soon.

We have more information on the correct domain setups here:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts

In a nutshell, to set up the CNAME correctly you need the following:
1. for the www host point a CNAME record to domains.smugmug.com
2. also add or change an A record to 208.79.45.23 if you want people to be able to
access your site without www. Some domains allow you to use an @ sign
for the host to indicate that it is empty. Check the help at your
domain host to see what they recommend.

If you use subdomain.yourdomain.com instead of www.yourdomain.com ,
point the subdomain with a CNAME record to domains.smugmug.com and don't
add an A record as it isn't needed.

Do not use your full domain in the CNAME unless the domain host tells
you to. If you do, you will end up with
www.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com or something similar.

Do not put in the yournickname.smugmug.com address as the destination no
matter how tempting that may be. Do not use forwarding or redirects
either. None of these will work correctly.

records if there are any for your site. It will take 24-48 hours for
the changes to propagate around the internet.

If you have not already done so, go to your SmugMug control panel and
enter the custom domain on the settings tab. That is all there is too
it. If you have problems, please let me know.

If you are stuck, send me your domain host UserID and set the password
to something temporary like SmugTemp123. I will log in and make the
changes or check the settings for you. When I am done you can reset the
password.

1. the name of your domain registrar
2. login name to your domain
3. change the password for your domain to smugtemp{insert_4_random_digits}

Once I have made the changes, I will let you know so that you could
change your password back.

Light_prod

I seem to be having this problem. Since its years after these posts I'm assuming the info here is out of date.

Anyone able to help!? I have clients trying to access my website!

cheers,

L.

Light_prod

right well, seems after a few hours (and of course, after just having posted, its up again. don't know what happened there, seems to have fixed itself!

jfriend

Light_prod wrote: »

I seem to be having this problem. Since its years after these posts I'm assuming the info here is out of date.

Anyone able to help!? I have clients trying to access my website!

cheers,

L.

Folks can't really help if you don't include a link to your site. It's possible your domain isn't configured properly. Smugmug has pretty strict rules about how it has to be done or it won't work reliably with their CDN (content delivery network used to accelerate sites).

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

Folks can't really help if you don't include a link to your site. It's possible your domain isn't configured properly. Smugmug has pretty strict rules about how it has to be done or it won't work reliably with their CDN (content delivery network used to accelerate sites).

Yeah, that thing we spend $millions on to make the site speedy for all

docwalker

I just want to point out that although this post is a couple years old now the information is correct. We have been asking people to make this change for months before this post was made. If you do not make the change soon your domain will stop working.

flashon

I made the change and my domain forwarding works fine. However I am no longer able to receive emails sent to my domain email addresses. I am using 1&1 as the domain host. Anyone has a workaround solution?
Thanks.

docwalker

Flashon, I am afraid that the best solution is to transfer to a new host that allows you to use the CNAME correctly. There is no reason why you should not be able to have a CNAME and email. I recommend that you DO NOT use domain forwarding as it will cause problems.