Add an A/AAAA Record without a hostname?
I have my website working with the 'www' hostname but want to make sure it works without the 'www' as well. When I go to add a new A/AAAA Record from the 'Domains' tab on the Linode website I can't seem to add one with an empty hostname. The hostname field has a default value that I can't make blank. Any ideas about how I could accomplish this?
Thanks!
Matt
3 Replies
mjones
Linode Staff
Hi Matt! Generally a DNS Zone is made for the 'non-www' version of the domain, so it should be set up correctly be default. Could you try visiting the domain without the 'www' to see if it works? In some cases there's a redirect in place that will send all traffic to the 'www' version of the site even when visiting the 'non-www' version. If it's not working as you expect, would you mind sharing the domain so I can take a look?
Thanks for the speedy reply! The domain is www.vocaldatatracker.com. I've noticed that when I type that into my browser (chrome) without the 'www' it automatically adds the 'www' on my desktop, though on my laptop it didn't. Further, and this may be pedantic, when I manually remove the 'www' from the chrome search bar I get a 'site can't be reached' page.
I have the following A/AAAA records (suitably anonymized):
Hostname IP Address TTL
domain.com <IPv4 address> Default
domain.com <IPv6 address> Default
dave <IPv4 address> Default
dave <IPv6 address> Default
mail <IPv4 address> Default
mail <IPv6 address> Default
www <IPv4 address> Default
www <IPv6 address> Default
Thus, my Linode has 4 domain names domain.com, dave.domain.com, mail.domain.com and www.domain.com. The order is important!
Using this method, domain.com and www.domain.com are equivalent and no redirects need to be configured in the web server. My http:// site does not redirect to my https:// site. This is by design.
For the browser issue, blow the browser cache (a couple of times) and try again. Also, I think Chrome has some setting governing the behavior you're seeing. Try turning it off.
-- sw