Help with DNS please. root works, WWW does not.
I've had a real day. Survived getting to our new host, but for whatever reason I can get gamingtrend.com to load but not www. I thought I had the appropriate CNAME in here, but...it's just not working. I could use a fresh set of eyes to help me just fix this. I'm tired, I've still got a lot to do, and I'd like this to work. Anyone?
Don't know what's safe to put in here or not...
85 Replies
GamingTrend
GamingTrend- by humans, for humans
One of the longest running independent gaming news, reviews and culture sites on the web.
Is the www subdomain configured on your hosting platform? Does your certificate cover the www subdomain?
The easiest would be to just have the www subdomain redirect to the apex domain.
https://discord.com/channels/595317990191398933/1338234026594664549
I just asked about this a few days ago for a similar issue
IDK if that will help at all
I'm just not sure what I'm doing differently. I tried the AAAA trick to no avail. This is where I'm at:
So I'm pretty green with DNS stuff but I know I needed to make a redirect rule which is not done in the DNS setting up spot as well.
I know I'm missing something obvious....
Also the www i set up was for a AAAA record pointed to 100::
That said, I'm a static site hosted on cloudflare pages.
Don't forget also, DNS propogation can take forevs
just caught the 100 has two :: after it
added that. Let's see if that does it. Waiting for it to propagate.
To be clear, gamingtrend.com resolves, http://www.gamingtrend.com/ does not
no dice so far
Did you try asking nicely?
lol
I know there is a DNS flush for google and a few other things
Lemme see if I can find those links
I need to bookmark them this time
Google for Developers
Flush Cache Β |Β Public DNS Β |Β Google for Developers
OpenDNS
OpenDNS: Cloud-Delivered Security Enforcement and Intelligence
We secure every device, everywhere to reduce the risk and impact of security breaches. Big data analytics predict and prevent threats before they happen.
Those can help you get that DNS propagated faster in my limited experience.
First thing -- never knew about these links. Thank you very much! I think this still has to be a misconfiguration though.
Possibly!
The DNS bit with the AAAA record and 100:: was also only a part of the solution. The redirect rule was required as well.
Is there a reason your DNS record for the www subdomain points somewhere else than your record for the apex domain?
Unfortunately I think they are at that place we've all been where they are mentally spent for the day but need this working. I also think, like me, they are not very familiar with DNS and may not really have a good answer to that question past "I did a bunch of things from a bunch of different answers and now its in a state that no one understands"
I think they are open to whatever changes need to be made, they just need to know what they are or the additional info to provide.
Understandable. What I can tell you definitely helps is if you clearly explain what you want to achieve. "It doesn't work and I want it to work" just means the people trying to help first need to "interrogate" you for what it is that you're actually trying to do.
Explaining your problem in a well structured manner is half the work π
True.
What other questions can we ask to get them further along then? Maybe we can make a bulleted list?
We know that the site works via https:// without the www subdomain
And doesn't with it and that is the problem
We also know what the current state looks like mostly.
We don't know anythign else though.
Such as how its hosted
What other info do we need?
Sorry -- I'm new to this. Is the apex domain gamingtrend.com?
we're hosted on Ghost.io
Happy to provide. Just juggling right now. Ill work at this till it's done. We're solving all the lil wobbles that come with moving to a new hosting site (changed from Wordpress to Ghost for a CMS)
hosted ghost, not self-hosted
hence the IP address. I got that from the "setting up Cloudflare with Ghost (PRO)" page from their support page
I've just checked a few things. Your site is hosted on Ghost.io, which uses fastly - I'd recommend to change the record for the apex domain (yes, that's gamingtrend.com) to DNS-Only if there aren't any Cloudflare features you specifically intend to use.
It's generally not a good idea to put two different CDNs behind each other.
Sometimes sleep is the best way to work. That said, DNS propagation can be slow so working and tinkering too much could be detrimental to your efforts as I understand it.
Sounds like @Laudian is gonna be a much better resource for you here though than me!
I appreciate your help just the same! π
Then, what Ghost.io does for your www subdomain is redirect it to the apex domain. Instead of making things more complicated, create ANY proxied record with the name www and then create a redirect rule that redirects all traffic to https://gamingtrend.com
so specifically, this should be DNS only?
sorry -- trying to make sure I don't botch this
It doesn't have to be, but I'd recommend that, unless you have a specific reason in mind why you want to proxy it.
Ghost.io uses Fastly as a CDN, and it just slows things down to put another CDN in front of that (Cloudflare). It would still work, but it's not really helpful.
I really don't. Just looking for speed. The site seems to have that at Ghost
Ok, changed to DNS only now
So...should it be the same for the project-gt.ghost.io one as well, and for the smae reasons?
If you ever want to use any Cloudflare features other than DNS records, you have to change ot back to proxied, but otherwise you're good for now. DNS-Only keeps things simple.
oh, sry, I meant the ghost.io record to DNS-Only
delete the 178... www record and only keep the 100:: for now
178 is a digital ocean address, which I assume is your old hosting platform?
I nabbed that 178 from here, but I'm starting to feel like that might have been an example, not one to follow
Ghost Help Center
Cloudflare domain setup
Learn how to setup a custom domain with Ghost(Pro) and Cloudflare.
Trying to help others is an excellent way to learn! Just keep at it π
Just delete it either way, you don't need it.
done
For sure! Though I'm not sure DNS is something I want to learn. Outsourcing it sounds much better for future endeavors.... π
Def think there's some other learning I need to do before the help rendered here makes sense though.
Now go to the Rules section and create a Redirect Rule. There will be a template for "Redirect from WWW to Root"
That's what you want.
Example
I can help with that bit!
haha
Hrm
tried chrome and edge just to be thorough
Matched yours. It warned me that I needed to set www.gamingtrend.com to proxied for it to work
I did so
www.gamingtrend.com errors out
gamingtrend.com works
I'm missing something obvious here. I just don't see it
I did not
Did you delete the 100:: record? I can't see it anymore
again because I replied to the wrong message^^
I killed that 178 address
not the 100 address
Oh, the 100:: should be proxied.
The ghost.io record is the one that should be DNS-Only.
ok. Proxied 100 and set ghost.io to DNS-only
now wait for propogation?
Depends on how you're testing. It works for me now.
Though the redirect isn't active for me yet.
getting closer
www.gamingtrend.com redirects to https://www.gamingtrend.com/
Can you delete your redirect rule and create it again? Don't change anything, just use the template
The template is good π
deleted and re-created
I'd say, learn about whatever interests you most. Though a basic understanding of DNS can be really helpful with everything internet related.
Is that what the template looks like for you?
wait, did you literally mean don't change it at all?
ohhhhh
www.*
sorry, misunderstood
Literally, change nothing
ok, deploying
Yes, that works
and sure enough
it works
π All my testing seems to be good!
GamingTrend
GamingTrend- by humans, for humans
One of the longest running independent gaming news, reviews and culture sites on the web.
GamingTrend
GamingTrend- by humans, for humans
One of the longest running independent gaming news, reviews and culture sites on the web.
thank you very, very much for your help
both of you. π
appreciate ya Sophie
So if you used any URL's in the past with www, they should still work.
yep, I see that
Thanks a bunch Laudian. Sincerely
It wasn't working before because you removed the Wildcard (*) from a Wildcard rule, I don't think that works
nod Tha'd do it.
π
I get what a DNS does, I get the TXT records as well but the rest of it CNAME vs AAAA vs MX vs A vs how to mash em together.... that's elusive to me.
Glad to have been able to render some help!
ok, time to go solve for some css hiccups.
π
That's where I am right now! haha
thanks again folks. Have a great evening. or depending on where you are, a good day
Have a great one frienderino(a)s!
Well, A and AAAA record are IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (AAAA) addresses. CNAME basically means "Use the record of the target domain instead", so it's a form of delegation - it gives someone else control over the records for a given name.
That all makes sense to me, just not how to like debug that when things go wrong or understand how to put things together.
Nor how to google the issues. lol
If that's something you're interested in, the Cloudflare community forum is a great place for DNS issues.
Though the simple answer often is: Keep your DNS records on DNS-Only until everything works, THEN change it to proxied. Trying to find issues while records are already proxied just makes things more complicated.
Yeah. I also wonder from a learning standpoint if its a losing battle. I don't think I'll be needing to do anything DNS related again for a year at least for instance.
As I said. just do what you're interested in. Sooner or later, you'll have enough contact with whatever you need to know to achieve what you want to do π Though having fundamental knowledge of "basic" internet technologies never hurts.
There's also always the question whether this is a hobby for you or part of your professional education. If it's professional, you'll sooner or later need to spend time on things you don't enjoy.
I'm a web dev with almost 15 years experience doing frontend and backend. I've always had someone else handling the deploys and where it actually runs though. My personal things never really got to a hosting level until this most recent project. Its almost embarassing to be such a DNS noob at this point in my career. haha
Well, I'm sure you had a lot of stuff in those 15 years that you didn't enjoy all that much π
DNS is probably only relevant for developers when you work on an SaaS and verify that customers created the correct records etc if you aren't involved in the deployment at all.
Though there's one thing I have to mention: SRV records! So many (network) applications (like games) should use SRV records, and I'm convinced the only reason they don't is that the developers didn't know about them!!!
I love to hear people spiel about their fav tech things. I can spiel that
switch statements are almost ALWAYS a bad choice, and that also <datalist> is the coolest element that no one uses.