Cname to Cname to Cname?

bobrandklev · December 27, 2007

I've just changed my url and setup the cname at GoDaddy and changed the setting in control panel and it's working great! www.BobFoto.com

So I then wanted to make sure my old address worked as well so I cnamed http://photos.bobrandklev.com to www.bobfoto.com and it resolves correctly in DNS but I run into a problem at SmugMug as it won't resolve to my site? Is there a setting you can change on the Smug site or do I have to change something on my DNS side?

Thanks in advance,

Bob

Andy · December 27, 2007

I will ask our expert to help you,it'll be a bit later.

Thanks!

docwalker · December 27, 2007

I was in the same boat as you are a while back. I had been using 1 domain and when I decided to get back seriously into photography I registered my current domain that is more related to photography. That left me deciding how to handle my old domain traffic.

I did a lot of trial and error testing and reading the SmugMug help pages to figure out how to handle this.

SmugMug currently only supports 1 domain pointed at an account at a time. Pointing CNAME > to CNAME > to your SmugMug account does not work due to the way CNAME pointing works.

CNAME(ing) points your domain to the new location so that the URL should appear to stay the same in the address bar. The bobphoto.com points to your SmugMug account but the URL stays bobphoto.com. SmugMug knows that bobphoto.com is your URL due to the "Custom Domain" entry in your control panel.

When you daisy chain the domains such as photos.bobrandklev.com pointing to bobphoto.com that is also pointed to your SmugMug.com the problem begins. What happens is the photos.bobrandklev.com is passed to bobphoto.com and due to the way CNAME's work the photos.bobrandklev.com is passed to SmugMug. The system does not know who photos.bobrandklev.com is so the traffic ends up at smugmug.com.

It is possible to forward the traffic from photos.bobrandklev.com to bobphoto.com and let the CNAME send it to your SmugMug account. But, Google and some of the search engines see this as gaming the system and it is possible to hurt your search ratings. There are several Search Engine Optimization (SEO) articles on the internet that describe why this happens.

You can give it a try but depending on your domain host, they may not allow this. Mine did not like redirecting the subdomain to another domain. They wanted the entire domain redirected/forwarded.

My solution for the problem back when I was dealing with it was to put up a simple park page at my old site. "My website has moved to xxxxxx.xxx. Please update your bookmarks to the new site" I left that up for a year and when I was sure that everyone had the new address, I took it down. There are ways to build in count down timers that will automatically forward the visitor to the new domain. I find that these are not very useful as most people wil not wait the 5-10 seconds for the redirect. Most get impatient and click the link to get there faster.

If you need help with your domain settings, email the support desk (http://www.smugmug.com/help/emailreal) and put Attn: Doc in the subject line. I will be happy to help you get your custom domain set up.

--Doc
SmugMug Support Hero Domain Specialist

bobrandklev · December 27, 2007

docwalker wrote:

I was in the same boat as you are a while back. I had been using 1 domain and when I decided to get back seriously into photography I registered my current domain that is more related to photography. That left me deciding how to handle my old domain traffic.

I did a lot of trial and error testing and reading the SmugMug help pages to figure out how to handle this.

SmugMug currently only supports 1 domain pointed at an account at a time. Pointing CNAME > to CNAME > to your SmugMug account does not work due to the way CNAME pointing works.

CNAME(ing) points your domain to the new location so that the URL should appear to stay the same in the address bar. The bobphoto.com points to your SmugMug account but the URL stays bobphoto.com. SmugMug knows that bobphoto.com is your URL due to the "Custom Domain" entry in your control panel.

When you daisy chain the domains such as photos.bobrandklev.com pointing to bobphoto.com that is also pointed to your SmugMug.com the problem begins. What happens is the photos.bobrandklev.com is passed to bobphoto.com and due to the way CNAME's work the photos.bobrandklev.com is passed to SmugMug. The system does not know who photos.bobrandklev.com is so the traffic ends up at smugmug.com.

It is possible to forward the traffic from photos.bobrandklev.com to bobphoto.com and let the CNAME send it to your SmugMug account. But, Google and some of the search engines see this as gaming the system and it is possible to hurt your search ratings. There are several Search Engine Optimization (SEO) articles on the internet that describe why this happens.

You can give it a try but depending on your domain host, they may not allow this. Mine did not like redirecting the subdomain to another domain. They wanted the entire domain redirected/forwarded.

My solution for the problem back when I was dealing with it was to put up a simple park page at my old site. "My website has moved to xxxxxx.xxx. Please update your bookmarks to the new site" I left that up for a year and when I was sure that everyone had the new address, I took it down. There are ways to build in count down timers that will automatically forward the visitor to the new domain. I find that these are not very useful as most people wil not wait the 5-10 seconds for the redirect. Most get impatient and click the link to get there faster.

If you need help with your domain settings, email the support desk (help@smugmug.com) and put Attn: Doc in the subject line. I will be happy to help you get your custom domain set up.

--Doc
SmugMug Support Hero Domain Specialist

Thanks Doc, I'm no expert but I do come from the computer tech world so this makes pure sense but I have to ask/clarify a couple things you mentioned.

So in control panel I setup www.bobfoto.com to be my url for my site and CNAME my dns to www.smugmug.com. The SmugMug systems reads the incoming header request and directs to my website http://bobrandklev.smugmug.com correct?

That all makes sense but my question is for my other domains can I not just CNAME other domains to http://bobrandklev.smugmug.com. I should be able to point photos.bobrandklev.com to bobrandklev.smugmug.com?

Technically this should work but are you saying this is the problem with search engines and optimization or am I way off base?

docwalker · December 27, 2007

bobrandklev wrote:

So in control panel I setup www.bobfoto.com to be my url for my site and CNAME my dns to www.smugmug.com. The SmugMug systems reads the incoming header request and directs to my website http://bobrandklev.smugmug.com correct?

Exactly!

bobrandklev wrote:

That all makes sense but my question is for my other domains can I not just CNAME other domains to http://bobrandklev.smugmug.com. I should be able to point photos.bobrandklev.com to bobrandklev.smugmug.com?

Technically this should work but are you saying this is the problem with search engines and optimization or am I way off base?

The problem is that the header request would be from photos.bobrandklev.com and SmugMug does not know who that is. We know who www.bobfoto.com is due to the entry in the control panel.

Remember that CNAME passes the header request on so daisy chaining them would pass the header request from the first domain in the line.

bobrandklev · December 27, 2007

docwalker wrote:

Exactly!

The problem is that the header request would be from photos.bobrandklev.com and SmugMug does not know who that is. We know who www.bobfoto.com is due to the entry in the control panel.

Remember that CNAME passes the header request on so daisy chaining them would pass the header request from the first domain in the line.

Thanks for the help Doc, I went to a windows/front page web server and created a web with headers of photos.bobrandklev.com and then setup a default.asp page and added this code:

[HTML]<%
response.redirect "http://bobrandklev.smugmug.com"
%>[/HTML]

Then at GoDaddy I created an A record and pointed to the IP address of the windows web server.

So now when you type in photos.bobrandklev.com it's A record is directed to the windows web server, then the redirect to SmugMug and it's seemless.

I agree and made a note to shut this off after a year!

Hopefully this will help others if they run across the same problems.

docwalker · December 27, 2007

Ha... Like they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Good info.

xxclixxx · December 30, 2007

"But, Google and some of the search engines see this as gaming the system and it is possible to hurt your search ratings."

False. If you do a 301 redirect then you will effectivly tell the search engines that your site has moved to a new location, keeping any rankings.

http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/movingUrlResults.html
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

Note that you want the header links in your smugmug template to link to the full URL of your domain. Otherwise if they goto whatever.smugmug.com, Google may decide that is your website as it doesn't redirect. But if all your links goto the domain, Google is smart enough to figure out which is the dupe that isn't wanted.

xxclixxx · December 30, 2007

bobrandklev wrote:

So now when you type in photos.bobrandklev.com it's A record is directed to the windows web server, then the redirect to SmugMug and it's seemless.

You want to add this line above your line. It's what tells the browser it's a 301 redirect, not a 302, which is key for everyone to know it's a permanent move:

<code>Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"

http://www.seoconsultants.com/tips/asp/301.asp
</code>

DrDavid · December 30, 2007

Another way...
Here's what I did... I originally used one domain (we'll call it photos.original.com) and wanted to replace it with a new domain (www.new.com).. BUT, I had already given out links with the photos.original.com URL (and didn't want to break those), plus, I wanted to be able to use www.new.com as the 'official' smugmug domain. SO... Here's the trick:

For www.new.com, set that domain up the way you'd set up any other domain on smugmug. Point the A to smug's IP address, the CNAME to @, and use www.new.com as your smugmug virtual domain name.

Now, for the sneaky part. You'll need access to a linux host for this (i.e. Apache). I'd be willing to host these redirects for a small fee too (I have a very fast machine, and a very fast internet connection).

First, point your photos.original.com to your linux box's IP address/cname.

I use Ubuntu, so, you may need to modify the path a bit, but, in my case, I created a new file in /etc/apache2/sites-available called "photos.original.com", then paste the following (changing where needed)
[PHP]
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName photos.original.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteLog /var/log/apache2/photos.log
RewriteLogLevel 2
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.new.com/$1 [L]
</VirtualHost>
[/PHP]
Last, go to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled and use the command

ln -s ../sites-available/photos.original.com

of course, the filename should be whatever you actually called it. Restart apache, and voila.. It works. Requests to photos.original.com/gallery/132432342#23423423 are rewritten as www.new.com/gallery/132432342#23423423 and the user sees the new URL in their browser. BUT, all the old links WORK!

Now, technically, you should be able to use the rewrite rule in an .htaccess file, but, I was too lazy to create a new directory, etc. Anyways, hope this helps someone!

To be clear, this is a way to do two things:

1) You can use this method to create a 'virtual domain' for non-pro users. Of course, the user will be redirected to yourname.smugmug.com/whatever, but, at least your emailed links can look nicer
2) You can use this method to move one domain to another without losing/breaking any links

David

docwalker · December 30, 2007

xxclixxx wrote:

False. If you do a 301 redirect then you will effectivly tell the search engines that your site has moved to a new location, keeping any rankings.

If I am incorrect on this, my apologies. I was operating off of information learned several months back. In fact it was research that I did after seeing your post about the duplicate content generated from forwarding a custom domain with a SmugMug site. Information that was available at the time indicated that Google dinged your rankings for duplicate content. This was especially a problem if you grabbed a bunch of domains and pointed them at one site.

I realized that this was a problem with my site as I had several (I think 3 domains) pointed at mine at the time.

I still see this same information being discussed periodically on SEO blogs and such.

Again, if I am incorrect, my apologies. Because Google keeps their ranking system secret there is a lot of speculation and theories as to how it works. Some of them are incorrect, and some of them appear to be valid based off of available information. ie crappy rankings that get better when the offending practice is stopped, which happened in my case.

DrDavid, I am glad that you have the domains working the way you want them to. congrats

DrDavid · December 30, 2007

docwalker wrote:

DrDavid, I am glad that you have the domains working the way you want them to. congrats

Just thought I'd post it so that others could benefit

I've gotten more than my fair share of help from this site, so, I figured I'd try to give something back! :ivar

bobrandklev · January 2, 2008

Wow DocWalker and DrDavid, is there a doctor in the house!

Thanks for the help guys, I've got the cname setup but I have other domains so I'll just setup a forward 301 to make the search engines happy.

I had to create a cname for photos.bobrandklev.com as I couldn't forward my entire domain.

Thanks again for the help guys!

Bob

Cname to Cname to Cname?

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