CNAME Flattening
Hello.
I'm looking for some clarification on something. I will outline my issue below. Originally I was going to piggy back onto a "SSL Handshake failed" 525 error thread:
"I'm piggy-backing onto this because I want to avoid creating a new post if possible. I was seeing this issue as well for my root domain. I see that my root had an A record with "ABCD.com" and a CNAME record with www and the content field being "parking.namecheap.com".
I deleted the A record and now I get the following up top in the "Recommended steps to complete setup..."
Add an A, AAAA, or CNAME record for your root domain so that ABCD.com will resolve.
my question: can I simply convert the CNAME record to an A record or does that CNAME need to stay there as 'parking.namecheap.com'"
... So I answered my own question and I was able to convert the "www" CNAME record to an A record and now my root will resolve.
Now my question is this. When I try to create a CNAME record with "ABCD.com" I get the CNAME flattening info bubble, but yes, the notice about needing a CNAME record for my root domain does go away.
Am I doing something incorrectly? How or why was the previous situation flipped but I didn't get any notice of CNAME flattening?
Thanks in advance for any insight and clarification on this scenario.7 Replies
Can you clarify a bit more?
Are you asking why when you manually converted the CNAME to an A record and made it, it didn't have the cname flattening warning?
By creating a CNAME on your apex CF resolves it into A/AAAA records on Edge and dynamically flattens it for you. Nothing wrong with using that feature, it's just telling you what's happening
sort of...I'm asking about the way it was originally, when it was flipped (CNAME record was www | A record was ABCD.com) and there was NO notice about flattening. why no notice then, but now when I flip the scenario I'm getting that notice?
so currently my scenario is (CNAME record ABCD.com | A record is www) and things appear to be working as intended
because having A/AAAA records on your apex don't need to be flattened
Only CNAMEs need to be flattened to A/AAAA Records since CNAMEs aren't allowed on apex per RFCs/standards (CNAME means "follow me for all types" but some types like SOAs need to live there as well without redirects and such)
and you're not going to have that warning/info box on www because having CNAMEs on subdomains is perfectly fine (and not flattened by default), just not on the root/apex
Thank you for that Sir. Gonna have to chew on that for a bit. DNS is a helluva thing.
well let me put it this way: You can just put CNAMEs on both apex (abcd.com) and www and you'd be fine, no issues there, and in some cases it's preffered in case namecheap changes their IPs one day
I sort of get that. My confusion lies in the fact that it was populated that way originally and for whatever reason my A record would not resolve. All my sub domains would, but not the root. Then when I did the flip it did.
to be honest. I didn't try pointing anything to the CNAME when it was originally "www". That just didn't make sense to me
plus it was pointing to "parkingpage.namecheap.com"
Anyways, it seems to be working now and you've given me some good technical info to look into. Thanks again @Chaika
ok wow. that's the part I was missing.
need A record set to @ and then the CNAME record set to www and the target set to @. now that makes wayyyyy more sense. facepalm on myself
weird bot
that's one simpler way to do it
then you just have to update one record to change things