CNAME question

trihokietrihokie Registered Users Posts: 78 Big grins
edited February 13, 2006 in SmugMug Support
I am trying to figure out this CNAME stuff. I have a registered domain name--trihokie.com--registered with godaddy.com. I followed the procedures outlined in your help section and successfully changed www.trihokie.com to my smugmug account. My original setup would allow viewers to enter either trihokie.com or www.trihokie.com into their browsers and my page would pop up. It appears that now only the www.trihokie.com will connect to my smugmug account, while trihokie.com will go to my old web page. I think this has to do with godaddy.com not allowing two aliases...?
My old settings were:
Alias / Points to / TTL
www / @ / 3600
My new settings are:
Alias / Points to / TTL
www / smugmug.com / 3600
I know the "@ will point to the name that you have registered, but when I try to add my old www @ 3600" to the list I get a message that says I can't have two aliases.
Can this be fixed? I noticed that Andy William's sample site will connect if you enter www.moonriverphotography.com or just moonriverphotography.com

Thanks
Barry
www.trihokie.com

Hokies Rule!
www.trihokie.com

Comments

  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    trihokie wrote:
    I am trying to figure out this CNAME stuff. I have a registered domain name--trihokie.com--registered with godaddy.com. I followed the procedures outlined in your help section and successfully changed www.trihokie.com to my smugmug account. My original setup would allow viewers to enter either trihokie.com or www.trihokie.com into their browsers and my page would pop up. It appears that now only the www.trihokie.com will connect to my smugmug account, while trihokie.com will go to my old web page. I think this has to do with godaddy.com not allowing two aliases...?
    My old settings were:
    Alias / Points to / TTL
    www / @ / 3600
    My new settings are:
    Alias / Points to / TTL
    www / smugmug.com / 3600
    I know the "@ will point to the name that you have registered, but when I try to add my old www @ 3600" to the list I get a message that says I can't have two aliases.
    Can this be fixed? I noticed that Andy William's sample site will connect if you enter www.moonriverphotography.com or just moonriverphotography.com

    Thanks
    Barry
    www.trihokie.com




    "I don't want my visitors to have to type www..." We hear that a lot.

    If you just want your web address to be http://yourdomain.com instead of something like http://www.yourdomain.com, you can use the @ symbol instead of inserting the subdomain when setting it up. (A subdomain is the part the proceeds yourdomain.com — www is a common subdomain.) Registrars use the @ symbol to indicate the lack of a domain (rather than just leaving it blank).

    Some registrars don't allow CNAMEs with @ symbols. They force you to use an A record instead. The basic principle is the same, but instead of pointing to www.smugmug.com it points to our IP address.

    Gotcha: Our IP address might change in the future, causing an A record to break. For this reason we suggest trying a CNAME record first.

    Our current IP address is 63.81.134.23

    ***** A RECORDS ARE NOT SUBSTITUTES FOR PROPER CNAME ALIASING **************

    I hope this helps :D

    Andy
  • trihokietrihokie Registered Users Posts: 78 Big grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    I have a friend that is really stupid when it comes to this computer stuff.... OK, I am the stupid friend. What I don't understand is, if the Alias www Points to will direct domainname.com to www.domainname.com (and vice versa) and Alias www Points to smugmug.com will direct www.domainname.com to domainname.smugmug.com, what Alias and Points to settings would be used to direct domainname.com to domainname.smugmug.com? I am guessing that an Alias domainname and Points to smugmug.com would do the trick but I am gun-shy when it comes to making changes like that without knowing what may happen afterwards.
    Thanks for the advice
    Barry

    Hokies Rule!
    www.trihokie.com
  • mkpatilmkpatil Registered Users Posts: 85 Big grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    trihokie wrote:
    I have a friend that is really stupid when it comes to this computer stuff.... OK, I am the stupid friend. What I don't understand is, if the Alias www Points to will direct domainname.com to www.domainname.com (and vice versa) and Alias www Points to smugmug.com will direct www.domainname.com to domainname.smugmug.com, what Alias and Points to settings would be used to direct domainname.com to domainname.smugmug.com? I am guessing that an Alias domainname and Points to smugmug.com would do the trick but I am gun-shy when it comes to making changes like that without knowing what may happen afterwards.
    Thanks for the advice
    Barry

    I am cutting and pasting the info I had mailed to someone few days ago.
    I was able to solve this issue the following way so that users can get to my site directly using hibiscuscreations.com without the 'www' - the trick is to use both A Name and CNAMES records and park site with redirection as explained below.
    To get to this without using smugmug's IP address (directly), I created A Name record and parked it on GoDaddy's site (something that they do as a service to their customers) then I redirected this site to my www.hibiscuscreations.com (www.hibiscuscreations.com already takes me to my page on smugmug because of the CNAMES aliases - the CNAME www is aliased to www.hibiscuscreations.smugmug.com and this was done before.)
    A Name Record:

    Points To: Parked IP address at GoDaddy's
    Rediects to www.hibiscuscreations.com
    CNAMES Record:
    Alias: www
    Points To: www.hibiscuscreations.smugmug.com
    This works!!!

    Thanks,
    Milind
  • flyingdutchieflyingdutchie Registered Users Posts: 1,286 Major grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    trihokie wrote:
    I am trying to figure out this CNAME stuff. I have a registered domain name--trihokie.com--registered with godaddy.com. I followed the procedures outlined in your help section and successfully changed www.trihokie.com to my smugmug account. My original setup would allow viewers to enter either trihokie.com or www.trihokie.com into their browsers and my page would pop up. It appears that now only the www.trihokie.com will connect to my smugmug account, while trihokie.com will go to my old web page. I think this has to do with godaddy.com not allowing two aliases...?
    My old settings were:
    Alias / Points to / TTL
    www / @ / 3600
    My new settings are:
    Alias / Points to / TTL
    www / smugmug.com / 3600
    I know the "@ will point to the name that you have registered, but when I try to add my old www @ 3600" to the list I get a message that says I can't have two aliases.
    Can this be fixed? I noticed that Andy William's sample site will connect if you enter www.moonriverphotography.com or just moonriverphotography.com

    Thanks
    Barry
    www.trihokie.com

    Be careful when cookies are used:
    If you allow http://mysite.com (instead of http://www.mysite.com) to be typed in, make sure the URL is changed/forwarded/rewritten as http://www.mysite.com. This should be done for proper cookie handling:

    If a cookie is set on your domain "mysite.com" the domain-value for the cookie needs to be ".mysite.com". Note the first period '.' in this value! A cookie-domain is not valid unless it starts with a period and has another period as well. This is to avoid sites setting cookies for the domain ".com", for example.

    If your site's URL is and remains http://mysite.com (the final value in your browser's address-bar), then there is only one period and cookies may not work properly.

    This is not an issue if the cookie's domain is not set at all. Then the cookie's domain defaults to the current host-name, regardless of how many periods are in its name.
    I can't grasp the notion of time.

    When I hear the earth will melt into the sun,
    in two billion years,
    all I can think is:
        "Will that be on a Monday?"
    ==========================
    http://www.streetsofboston.com
    http://blog.antonspaans.com
  • KeithHKeithH Registered Users Posts: 73 Big grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    Here's what I did...
    I use godaddy and a few weeks ago, addition to using SmugMug's instructions, I had my domain name at godaddy forwarded to the same URL with the www.This started working after a few hours so that people didn't have to enter the "www". I'm afraid to change anything since it has worked so far with both Internet Explorer and with Firefox.
  • Mike LaneMike Lane Registered Users Posts: 7,106 Major grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    Man, doing this with godaddy is a pain in the butt isn't it? It's much, much easier with dreamhost. ne_nau.gif
    Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance.

    http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    KeithH wrote:
    I use godaddy and a few weeks ago, addition to using SmugMug's instructions, I had my domain name at godaddy forwarded to the same URL with the www.This started working after a few hours so that people didn't have to enter the "www". I'm afraid to change anything since it has worked so far with both Internet Explorer and with Firefox.

    Forwarding is B-A-D

    We only fully support proper CNAME Aliasing.
  • mbradymbrady Registered Users Posts: 321 Major grins
    edited January 5, 2006
    I had a domain with Register.com and could not use @ for the CNAME alias, so I switched over to Joker.com and could not use @ with them either. I had to set up an A record to the smugmug IP address to get it to work.
  • javier.rinaldijavier.rinaldi Registered Users Posts: 210 Major grins
    edited February 13, 2006
    I also have a cname question,
    can I have multiple cname pointers? one to the main site, the other to a private category.
    e.g. have www.mydomain.com go to user.smugmug.com and also have
    events.mydomain.com go to user.smugmug.com/events

    Jav
    http://rinaldi.smugmug.com
    Jav


    Creator of: SmugManager

    "There's no dark side or the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark..."
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