www vs no www

Freeheelvrmnt · September 7, 2016

I've got my custom domain set up on smugmug. If I go to
http://www.benjamindbloom.com/Portfolio/Wedding I can get to my stuff just fine.
I recently discovered that if I go to http://benjamindbloom.com/Portfolio/Wedding I get a 404. What setting do I have to change to make both work?

owilliams · September 8, 2016

Hi Benjamin,

What you will need to do is edit the forwarding with your domain host. You need to forward your site without the www prefix to your site with the www prefix. So you will point benjamindbloom.com to www.benjamindbloom.com. Take a look here:

https://youtu.be/VQ-LCb5PO_E?t=97

I hope this helps! Let us know if you need anything else along the way.

Best,
-Oliver
SM Support

denisegoldberg · September 8, 2016

owilliams wrote: »

Hi Benjamin,

What you will need to do is edit the forwarding with your domain host. You need to forward your site without the www prefix to your site with the www prefix. So you will point benjamindbloom.com to www.benjamindbloom.com. Take a look here:

https://youtu.be/VQ-LCb5PO_E?t=97

I hope this helps! Let us know if you need anything else along the way.

Best,
-Oliver
SM Support

This only appears to work for the raw domain. I've tested this with my site and with leftquark's site as well.

If I enter denisegoldberg.com I am taken to www.denisegoldberg.com.
If I enter denisegoldberg.com/Gallery I am taken to a not found page.
If I enter www.denisegoldberg.com/Gallery I am taken to the requested page.

If I enter aaronmphotography.com I am taken to www.aaronmphotography.com.
If I enter aaronmphotography.com/Nature/Landscapes/ I am taken to a not found page.
If I enter www.aaronmphotography.com/Nature/Landscapes/ I am taken to the requested page.

The same is true for the OP's site. Entering benjaminbloom.com works. Entering the URL he specified in the first post does not.

--- Denise

photoclick · September 8, 2016

I think it all depends how the redirect is setup in your DNS account. My domain names are on Google and if I enter tailoredportraits.com I ma taken to www.tailoredportraits.com (as expected). If I enter tailoredportraits.com/Client-images I am taken to www.tailoredportraits.com ...not exactly what I expected but I will see how I can fix it in the DNS settings.

Freeheelvrmnt · September 8, 2016

Thanks Denise, Thanks Photoclick. Glad I'm not alone in having this problem.

Oliver - as has already been mentioned, this only works at the root level.

I had thought redirects like this had to be made with an .htaccess file, not through DNS. (I've got some web experience under my belt, but deal less with DNS than with front end stuff.)

owilliams · September 9, 2016

so it looks like the issue here is that you are using forwarding with an A Record pointed to an IP address. this will work for the homepage but not the direct links to galleries/folders/pages on your site. Instead, try editing the forwarding section with your domain hosts in order to get things working properly. If the issues persist, please include some screenshots of the domain forwarding section with your domain host so that we can check to make sure that it looks good.

Standing by,
-Oliver
SM Support

andylong42 · September 9, 2016

Same problem here...
I'm having exactly the same battle. When I have setup DNS previously I would use A records and have one for www and one for @ (or everything else). With Smugmug, it looks like I have to set a CNAME record to point at my domain (www.andrewlongphoto.co.uk). My DNS (123-Reg.co.uk) clearly says that if I set a CNAME to @ then it will forward all records including MX to that domain - I dont want that.

They have a domain forward option, but it is basically saying forward my domain (andrewlongphoto.co.uk) to another domain (e.g. to www.google.co.uk). I dont have the option to forward andrewlongphoto.co.uk to www.andrewlongphoto.co.uk

I've looked at the IP for my domain, but this just points at Cloudflare so cant do it that way either.

This is a real pain! There must be something that can be done?

denisegoldberg · September 9, 2016

andylong42 wrote: »

With Smugmug, it looks like I have to set a CNAME record to point at my domain (www.andrewlongphoto.co.uk).

The CNAME needs to point to domains.smugmug.com.

From the help page How do I use my custom domain?:

Option 3: DIY

If you purchased your domain name from another provider, be sure to check your domain host's setup instructions to prevent problems.
Point your CNAME 'www' to domains.smugmug.com.

Within the domain forwarding area, point the version of your domain address without the www to the address with the www: example.com > www.example.com.

Visit your SmugMug Account Settings > Me > Account tab for the "Custom Domain" line. Paste your new domain name into the box and click "Save Changes." That's it!

--- Denise

leftquark · September 13, 2016

denisegoldberg wrote: »

This only appears to work for the raw domain. I've tested this with my site and with leftquark's site as well.

If I enter http://aaronmphotography.com I am taken to www.aaronmphotography.com.
If I enter http://aaronmphotography.com/Nature/Landscapes/ I am taken to a not found page.
If I enter www.aaronmphotography.com/Nature/Landscapes/ I am taken to the requested page.

Well I'll be darned. Thanks for pointing that out. You'll noticed I've now fixed this and http://aaronmphotography.com/Nature/Landscapes should now properly redirect to the www version (with the /Nature/Landscapes).

All I had to do was fix the redirect on my domain host. It needed to use a "Wildcard Redirect", which redirects everything after the custom domain "/" to the new domain with the same thing after the "/".

On GoDaddy they call it "Match Path". See more info on their help pages

photoclick · September 13, 2016

On Google Domains it is called "Forward Path"

Lille Ulven · September 13, 2016

Does someone here have a clue how to do it with IWantMyName?

I have:
@ -> IP (A record)
www -> domains.smugmug.com (CNAME)
blog -> blogger (CNAME)

But of course like for you all here, entering lilleulven.com/Portfolios gives me a 404 Page not found while www.lilleulven.com/Portfolios get's me where I want to go...

Thanks in advance

(And yes, I am in contact with the IWantMyName customer service too, but maybe someone here already knows - as soon as I get a reply from them that solves the problem I will post it here too)

Lille Ulven

Update from IWantMyName customer support: they say that my CNAME and A records are spot on and that the error message that I get points to a routing error on Smugmug's site. So I have send this one on to the smug mug heroes now...hoping it can get fixed.

Freeheelvrmnt · September 13, 2016

Conveniently, I had registered my domain with godaddy, so I was able to just go through the process with the (apparently new, compared to when I first forwarded my domain) link that automatically set things up with GoDaddy. I'm not sure what the change in DNS was, because I didn't take a before/after of my configuration.

I hope others are able to figure out the fix!

leftquark · September 14, 2016

Lille Ulven wrote: »

Update from IWantMyName customer support: they say that my CNAME and A records are spot on and that the error message that I get points to a routing error on Smugmug's site. So I have send this one on to the smug mug heroes now...hoping it can get fixed.

Domain forwarding isn't something that's handled by DNS, or by us. It's handled on the server configuration of your domain host (IWantMyName). That's why all of us have been going into our domain settings (GoDaddy, Google Domains, or in my case, CPanel, which is what my host uses)

For you:
www looks set correct.
your non-www (is that "@"?) should point to your IWantMyName IP, so that also looks correct.

The IWantMyName support page doesn't mention anything about whether they support full path forwarding, so it's looking like perhaps they don't. I'd recommend getting back in touch with them, or look into switching to another domain host like Google (I know having to transfer domains sucks).

Lille Ulven · September 14, 2016

Thank you leftquark. Yes the @ is somehow the non-www. If I have understood everything correct than this setup here domain forwarding with IWantMyName should do the trick for me if I set up the non-www as the from part and the with www as the to part...

I would hate to leave IWantMyName, not only because they have a price that I can pay (not selling too much, I am affraid) but also because I like their offer. OK I never have used someone else before, so who knows if I wouldn't get the same or even better service, but then "never change a running system"...

leftquark · September 14, 2016

You have everything setup correctly - as you see the http://lilleulven.com redirects to http://www.lilleulven.com. But http://lilleulven.com/browse doesn't redirect, which means it's something with how IWantMyName does their redirect. This might be a case of their offering isn't up to what you're looking for

But perhaps they do support it, and just need to fix something on their end!

Should IWantMyname not support the redirect and you'd like to look at other options, it looks like Google Domains is free and you can transfer the domain to Google at no cost. Domain renewal is as cheap as $12/year. I'm sure there are others that are similar.

Lille Ulven · September 14, 2016

Thank you, leftquark.
If I understand this correct, than there was initially a change made by Smugmug on how to react to those redirects, which lead everybody to change their domain host's settings. I know it is a long shot, but could you mail me what actually was changed, then I can mail with the IWantMyName folks again and see if they can help me sort this without any provider changes. Else I will just send them the new setup routines from the smugmug help page and see if they can figure it out from there. Somehow I got the wrong specialization within computer science it seems...

leftquark · September 14, 2016

Redirects are always handled on the webserver hosting your domain, so I'm not sure this ever worked (ie: we haven't changed anything on our end since it's entirely controlled by your host). This makes sense because you're pointing www to SmugMug but you're not pointing the non-www to SmugMug (we wouldn't support it anyways). You're pointing it to your own server, so your own server has to handle the redirect.

P.S: I really hate saying "this is out of our hands" and it's driving me nuts that I can't help any further. I tried to pull up the IWantMyName help docs to see if I could see anything that wasn't configured correctly but it looks all good (or they don't support it). I'd personally reach out to them directly but since you've already started the conversation, it's probably best if I let you keep it going.

Lille Ulven · September 14, 2016

Thank you leftquark. Well yes, it sounds like it would be a good plan if you talked to IWantMyName directly...the casenumber I have with them on this is 206806.
Else: would you (and the Smugmug Heroes for that matter) allow me to forward your answers from this thread as well as from the emails I got last night (case ref on smugmug: 1216424)? Being the middleman is some option for loosing information on the way...but being the middleman and not a native english speaker is like a recipe for failure - and when both ends start pointing the middleman to the other end one gets pretty dizzy over time

leftquark · September 14, 2016

Feel free to PM me anything you'd like. I've reached out to them and referenced your case.

Lille Ulven · September 14, 2016

Thank you very much, leftquark. I'll keep my fingers crossed and send you what I have got from them yesterday via PM.

Didn't see your PM before I send mine...but now it is all in the hands of IWantMyName. Thank you so much for helping me out with this one

And now they (IWantMyName) have fixed it for me and it works like a charm, thank you so much for taking over, leftquark, I don't think I would have had a solution by now if you hadn't helped me out.

www vs no www

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