url forwarding question

dogwood

Using GoDaddy, I've figured out how to get http://www.petespringer.com to forward to my smugmug site. No problems at all there and great smugmug instructions.

But... when someone doesn't type the "www" (and instead just types petespringer.com in the address bar) it forwards to a Go Daddy site that says the url is parked there. Anyway to make it forward to my smugmug site instead? Or am I limited to one (www.petespringer.com) or the other (petespringer.com) for forwarding?

Andy

DO NOT forward, use CNAME instead. All Godaddy instrs and more are here

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

dogwood

i am using cname
Sorry Andy, that's what I meant. I followed the smugmug instructions to set it up exactly as recommended-- with the cname stuff.

But-- it still doesn't point to my smugmug site (or whatever the correct term is) when the address bar doesn't have the "www" typed in. Do I need to add anything for that to work? On my old url using joker, seems like it worked with both the "www" and without it.

BTW: I want to hear about the latest Canon DSLR from the PMA (but I'm sure Canon will make sure I hear about it). Lucky guy, you are!

dogwood

soooo...
I think I found my answer. When I type in "moonriverphotography.com", it takes me to "www.smugmug.com" page with no mention at all of Andy. I have to type the "www" to get to Andy's page.

Has ANYONE been able to configure their smugmug site to open from both "www.yoursite.com" and "yoursite.com" in the address bar? If not, this is a feature I would like to request.

tmlphoto

dogwood wrote:

I think I found my answer. When I type in "moonriverphotography.com", it takes me to "www.smugmug.com" page with no mention at all of Andy. I have to type the "www" to get to Andy's page.

Has ANYONE been able to configure their smugmug site to open from both "www.yoursite.com" and "yoursite.com" in the address bar? If not, this is a feature I would like to request.

I'm having the same problem using Network Solutions. I set up a cname using the alias www.tmlphoto.com & @.tmlphoto.com . If I type in the whole www address it works fine, but if I just use tmlphoto.com it doesn't work. What am I missing? TIA.

Baldy

Hi,

Near the bottom of this help page:

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

under the subtitle "I don't want my users to have to type www" is the answer you seek. Unfortunately, your registrar may require you to use an A name record for this, which means that if we change our IP address, which we may have to do in the future, your URL will break until you enter the new IP address and the DNS records propagate through the web.

Thanks,
Baldy

dogwood

cool
Thanks Baldy. I can deal with the changes if I have to and you folks have been pretty great at keeping us informed of changes. And I check here frequently to keep updated myself. Appreciate the help.

Mike Lane

Of course if you used dreamhost, you wouldn't have to deal with that. They make it easy for your site to use cname and work with or without www without resorting to an A record.

Just saying.

dogwood

alas...
I just switched everything from joker to godaddy earlier this month 'cause I wanted an e-mail address and godaddy talked me into switching my domain registration to them too. Wish I had known about dreamhost then! Good tip though for future domains.

Andy

dogwood wrote:

I think I found my answer. When I type in "moonriverphotography.com", it takes me to "www.smugmug.com" page with no mention at all of Andy. I have to type the "www" to get to Andy's page.

Has ANYONE been able to configure their smugmug site to open from both "www.yoursite.com" and "yoursite.com" in the address bar? If not, this is a feature I would like to request.

Yeah, for some reason I can't get register.com to accept an A record. Oh well.

Mike Lane

dogwood wrote:

I think I found my answer. When I type in "moonriverphotography.com", it takes me to "www.smugmug.com" page with no mention at all of Andy. I have to type the "www" to get to Andy's page.

Has ANYONE been able to configure their smugmug site to open from both "www.yoursite.com" and "yoursite.com" in the address bar? If not, this is a feature I would like to request.

http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
http://www.photos.mikelanestudios.com/
http://www.mikelanephotography.com/
http://mikelanephotography.com/

All of those go to the same place. No A records were harmed in the making of those URLs.

cambler

Hi guys - I work at eNom, and we support a solution to this (and, to be fair, many registrars do). Here's what you want to do: set your host header for "www" to a CNAME as per the instructions, but then set your entry for the non-www (also known as the "@" record) to use URL redirection to your www host.

This will cause all hits to example.com to be redirected via an HTTP 302 to www.example.com which will then CNAME to smugmug.

To see this in action, use my domain, "cheerphoto.com" and you'll see that the www.cheerphoto.com works as one would expect, but if you put in just cheerphoto.com, watch the address bar as it gets rewritten to www.cheerphoto.com (as a result of the 302) and then goes to smugmug.

Questions? I'd be happy to help.

tmlphoto

cambler wrote:

Hi guys - I work at eNom, and we support a solution to this (and, to be fair, many registrars do). Here's what you want to do: set your host header for "www" to a CNAME as per the instructions, but then set your entry for the non-www (also known as the "@" record) to use URL redirection to your www host.

This will cause all hits to example.com to be redirected via an HTTP 302 to www.example.com which will then CNAME to smugmug.

To see this in action, use my domain, "cheerphoto.com" and you'll see that the www.cheerphoto.com works as one would expect, but if you put in just cheerphoto.com, watch the address bar as it gets rewritten to www.cheerphoto.com (as a result of the 302) and then goes to smugmug.

Questions? I'd be happy to help.

Are you saying to forward, in my case, tmlphoto.com to www.tmlphoto.com? I use network solutions and they want the IP address for forwarding. How do I find out the IP address for www.tmlphoto.com? Sorry to be such a noob about the things.

cambler

tmlphoto wrote:

Are you saying to forward, in my case, tmlphoto.com to www.tmlphoto.com? I use network solutions and they want the IP address for forwarding. How do I find out the IP address for www.tmlphoto.com? Sorry to be such a noob about the things.

No, that's not correct. If they want an IP address, that's not forwarding. They're putting in an "A" record, which is something different (and not something you ever want to do with SmugMug).

What you want is "URL Forwarding" which causes an HTTP 302 to be used. I don't know if NetSol even offers that; I just know that we do, and many other registrars do as well.

Baldy

cambler wrote:

Hi guys - I work at eNom, and we support a solution to this (and, to be fair, many registrars do). Here's what you want to do: set your host header for "www" to a CNAME as per the instructions, but then set your entry for the non-www (also known as the "@" record) to use URL redirection to your www host.

This will cause all hits to example.com to be redirected via an HTTP 302 to www.example.com which will then CNAME to smugmug.

Hey that's a pretty interesting trick. It seems to work fine with your site.

I've often commented we don't want people using URL forwarding because of the problems with cookies it creates and the non-working back button issues it sometimes causes. But the 302 redirect to your own domain and then using CNAME seems to address both issues.

cambler

Baldy wrote:

Hey that's a pretty interesting trick. It seems to work fine with your site.

I've often commented we don't want people using URL forwarding because of the problems with cookies it creates and the non-working back button issues it sometimes causes. But the 302 redirect to your own domain and then using CNAME seems to address both issues.

Yup. Solves the problem and also plays by the rules.

With that, if you ever need registrar-level help with anything DNS-related, please don't hesitate to ping me. I'd be happy to help.

Andy

cambler wrote:

Yup. Solves the problem and also plays by the rules.

With that, if you ever need registrar-level help with anything DNS-related, please don't hesitate to ping me. I'd be happy to help.

Cambler, have you any experience with register.com - when I look there on my control panel I only see that they want to charge me $45/year MORE to have "forwarding" - ugh.

cambler

Andy wrote:

Cambler, have you any experience with register.com - when I look there on my control panel I only see that they want to charge me $45/year MORE to have "forwarding" - ugh.

Well, as I said, I work for eNom (my title is "Chief Software Strategist" which is just a fancy way of saying I get to think up cool new stuff and implement it), so Register.com is technically our competition.

Forwarding (and all of the DNS fun) comes free with our service. Now, eNom's model isn't a retail one. While you can buy names at retail, they're full price and, really, nobody does that. What makes us #3 is that we have a huge contingent of resellers who buy from us at deep wholesale and resell domains. So if you're keen to move domains to us to get that all for free, let me know, and I can give you a URL so that you don't pay full retail :-)

onethumb

cambler wrote:

Well, as I said, I work for eNom (my title is "Chief Software Strategist" which is just a fancy way of saying I get to think up cool new stuff and implement it), so Register.com is technically our competition.

Forwarding (and all of the DNS fun) comes free with our service. Now, eNom's model isn't a retail one. While you can buy names at retail, they're full price and, really, nobody does that. What makes us #3 is that we have a huge contingent of resellers who buy from us at deep wholesale and resell domains. So if you're keen to move domains to us to get that all for free, let me know, and I can give you a URL so that you don't pay full retail :-)

I'm just thinking out-loud here, so please don't take this as official SmugMug policy or direction, but...

Might there be any interest from eNom in some sort of partnership with SmugMug? From our point of view, we have a lot of problems with some of the registrars gouging on prices and providing poor service. We're not fond of companies that treat our customers poorly.

I don't think we'd want to make it a profit-sharing partnership, but instead, would love to:

- Direct our customers to you knowing that they'll be treated well and charged a fair price
- Get them a small discount for being a SmugMug customer

Most of the big registrars (Regiser.com, NetSol, GoDaddy) have managed to royally piss us (and our customers) off. It'd be nice to have a known good solution to send them to.

Anyway, food for thought. To be honest, I'm not familiar with eNom or your interface, so I'd have to check that out first - but your answers here have been smart and relevant - big points for eNom in my book.

Don

cambler

onethumb wrote:

I'm just thinking out-loud here, so please don't take this as official SmugMug policy or direction, but...

Might there be any interest from eNom in some sort of partnership with SmugMug? From our point of view, we have a lot of problems with some of the registrars gouging on prices and providing poor service. We're not fond of companies that treat our customers poorly...

Sure, I could bring this up with our bizdev guys, but if it's simply a case of communicating to make sure that we can offer things that SmugMug's customers want and need, and ensure that we play nicely (we do), I don't suspect there'd be a problem. We should talk.

chriscow

cambler wrote:

Sure, I could bring this up with our bizdev guys, but if it's simply a case of communicating to make sure that we can offer things that SmugMug's customers want and need, and ensure that we play nicely (we do), I don't suspect there'd be a problem. We should talk.

Perhaps we can even add a one-click smugmug setup to the control panel, or better yet, if SmugMug designed it, they could have a dedicated page for easy DNS setup through our API.

(...gears turning...)

Oh, BTW I work at eNom too...

Blog: http://www.chriscowherd.com
SmugMug: http://cowherd.smugmug.com

StevenV

if we use URL Forwarding to send the no-www address along, would we enter www.mysite.com or just mysite.com into smugmug's control panel?

Andy

StevenV wrote:

if we use URL Forwarding to send the no-www address along, would we enter www.mysite.com or just mysite.com into smugmug's control panel?

Neither, as that field in our control panel is only for CNAME Aliases.

http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2005/12/01/dont-get-framed-or-forwarded/

StevenV

since joker doesn't do CNAME for mysite.com, any suggestions then? I thought URL forwarding was soundling like the righ thing per this thread. How'd you get moonriverphotography.com (without www) to work right?

Andy

StevenV wrote:

since joker doesn't do CNAME for mysite.com, any suggestions then?

Set an A-record for mysite.com on Joker, we do that all the time. If you need help, holler!

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

StevenV

ah - A-Record. Can do, I just thought that was frowned upon because of possible address changes on the smugmug side. Is there a thread that keeps track of IP Address changes that we'd need to reflect in the A Record?

Andy

StevenV wrote:

ah - A-Record. Can do, I just thought that was frowned upon because of possible address changes on the smugmug side. Is there a thread that keeps track of IP Address changes that we'd need to reflect in the A Record?

No, there isn't, sorry. We'd update the help page if we ever do change our ip address.

StevenV

Andy wrote:

No, there isn't, sorry. We'd update the help page if we ever do change our ip address.

ok. May I suggest either a thread or rss feed for those of us who use A-Records, so we can get updated without having to wait for things to break? I imagine it's not the sort of thing that happends often, but when it does it'd be good to know asap.

as always, thanks for the quick replies both here & in email - you guys are great!

Andy

StevenV wrote:

ok. May I suggest either a thread or rss feed for those of us who use A-Records, so we can get updated without having to wait for things to break? I imagine it's not the sort of thing that happends often, but when it does it'd be good to know asap.

Actually, we warn about using A-records, in our help section:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts

You'll just have to keep an eye out, I wish I had a better answer for you. BTW, our IP address hasn't changed for some time. Doesn't mean it can't change in the future, but ...

as always, thanks for the quick replies both here & in email - you guys are great!

Thanks!

StevenV

Andy wrote:

Actually, we warn about using A-records

but you also admit that there's no other way when using joker (who you recommend) and probably others.

Andy wrote:

You'll just have to keep an eye out, I wish I had a better answer for you.

I believe a customer just gave you a better answer; just have whomever updates the help page also update a dedicated thread that we could subscribe to.

Andy

StevenV wrote:

but you also admit that there's no other way when using joker (who you recommend) and probably others.

Sure there is. We fully support CNAME Aliases. And so does Godaddy and Joker

We can't stop folks from using an A-record, so we try to warn that our IP address may change.

I believe a customer just gave you a better answer; just have whomever updates the help page also update a dedicated thread that we could subscribe to.

Steven, you can bet that we'll post here when we update or change our IP address. Thanks very much!