Community archive
My company has a internet address, but it will not work unless you type the www. in front of the address.
For instance, if you type www.abc.com, you get the page fine. If you type abc.com, it doesn't come up.
How do I fix this?
Thanks in advance.
by road-dog
or have you farmed that out? If you have outsourced hosting, this problem should be easily solved using their tech support infrastructure. It is a simple matter of a DNS entry change for the domain.
If you are self hosting, please provide a little more info so we can help you out.
by mallardtooxx
by admin
MAllard and RoadDog, as per usual are right on...
When you, or someone else creates a DNS entry, create 2. One that resolves as www.yourname.ext and one as yourname.ext
That's all there is to it! It is a major pet peeve of mine that EVERY admin doesn't do this automatically, even some big corporations seem to fall into the extra www trap.
by smiller
Thanks for the info. Since I am a newby that was sort of thrown into my current position I was hoping if you can be more specific.
My company does have an outside company maintain the content of the website, but the web server is at our company,maintained by my company. It is a Sun box running UNIX. Where do I go to make the additional entry. The program that is running on the box is an older, outdated version of Netscape messaging server.
Thanks in advance
by lordinfidel
not just 1 disadvantage, but 3.
first it's a unix box.
Not even that but a Sun box
And worse of all running a netscape webserver.
The first 2 can be dealt with, and can be very beneficial to you if you can master unix in a Sun enviroment.(I'm still learning SunOS)
But Netscape Messaging. I wish you luck and may the force be with you.
by admin
It's not the webserver, it's the way the Domain Name Server (DNS) is pointing to it.
Lord Infidel is right (as per usual! :> ) in saying that you could do it a couple of ways (see his post below) but basically, I would find out what your company is doing for DNS first. If it is in-house, just find the entry that points it to the www.mydomain.ext site, copy and paste another entry exactly identical and then take out the www. so it looks exact except the address now says: mydomain.ext
If your ISP or someone els host's the DNS just ask them to make an additional entry without the www. if you explain it to a tech there they should easily understand what you are getting at. You could also switch to a free DNS service like zoneedit.com (first five free) where they have a very simple graphic interface you could use to get started.
At any rate, first find out who is serving your DNS entries and start there. Good Luck! :)
by lordinfidel
This is dependant on how the web site is configured.
In web servers such as IIS and Apache, Web sites are accessed in one of 2 ways.
They either are accessed via IP; other wise known as having your site "bound" to an IP.
Or by a Host Header. A host header allows 1 IP to server multiple sites.
An IP can "only" do one or the other, not both.
So what does this mean?
If your site is using a shared IP. That is more than 1 website is hosted on that IP. Then simply add another host header to the site. The additional host header would be just abc.com (no host name in front of it)
If your site is "bound" to a single IP, then this is fixed in DNS. Simply create a A record that points to the root domain. The site will answer any name it receives because all it cares about is the IP.
The reverse is true with Host Headers. All the web server cares about is what host header it receives.
by admin
by snappylin
by lordinfidel
That is a IE trick and is not really a solution.
All IE is doing is pre-/appending the word you put into the address bar with www. and .com .
Regardless if it is correct or not. It makes no attempts to query dns to see if the host name exists. And if the domain name is in a root domain other than com, it will not work.
by pv]utrix[
Hello, I don't know if you got this answer or not yet but here goes anyway...
if you want your web page to come up whatever you put in your web browser www.abc.com
gfsdfsdf.abc.com, asdasd.asdasdas.asdasd.abc.com
or just abc.com
you need to create 2 records on your DNS server
1. Cname *.abc.com abc.com
2. a abc.com 111.111.111.111 <--- web server's IP
now all the traffic will be routed to abc.com
by pv]utrix[
If you don't know how to administer your own dns server go to everydns.net and use their services.
You can point your domain to their name servers and modify DNS records through a very user-friendly interface. And best of all it's FREE!!!
This discussion is closed to new replies.
Sort by Trending