Im still a hobbyist so apologies for my ignorance!
I would like to provide public and private websites under the domain name, for example, say example.net.
The public websites would be registered as dns records subdomains such www.example.net
The private websites would be handled by a dns wildcard record which would route to a default script ( asp?) to check if the IIS website exists.
If the host header passed by the wildcard matches a valid IIS website name it is redirected.
If not then the an error is returned such as a 404..
Is something like this possible?
If so, a link?
Related
My client recently purchased a new domain name and wants it to link to an interior page on the current website. Both domains are registered on the same account. The main site is currently hosted on a Media Temple Grid account and I see no option for "forwarding." There is an option to "Point the domain to another server." Not sure if this is more of a DNS record change or an .htaccess redirect?
The main website is: fairmountstrings.com
The new domain name that needs routing is: fairmountstringquartet.org
The interior page that I'm trying to route to is: fairmountstrings.com/concerts/fairmount-string-quartet/
I selected "Point the domain to another server" which made the DNS for fairmountstringquartet.org the same as the main website. I then tried multiple different redirects in the .htaccess file that's on the root of the server but nothing seems to be working.
there is an obligatory CNAME entry for one of my Google domains.
It reads:
_domainconnect.[mydomain].de CNAME 6 hours connect.domains.google.com.
What is this CNAME entry used for? As far as I have understood DNS this should not be necessary to find the actual server IP.
It is indeed not necessary for IP lookup. I suppose maybe Google itself uses it for something. I've found this https://community.cloudflare.com/t/domainconnect-in-dns-record-is-it-needed/185059 but no actual explanation of what it is.
I noticed this entry in one of my domains I have in CloudFlare that is registered via Google Domains, I also have another domain purchased there with a DNS zone on CF that does not have it. I'd say it's safe to get rid of the record — Google's dashboard never complained about it and DNS itself certainly does not need it.
It is more protocol than anything, and is not used to find your server's IP.
There is an open Web standard called Domain Connect that Google adheres to. Within Domain Connect's specifications (at this link at the time of writing) there is a section called DNS Provider Discovery that gives a full explanation of the spec Google is trying to fulfill by having that CNAME record.
To summarize what the Domain Connect docs say on this spec:
Every domain name, to meet this spec, needs to provide information on what DNS provider is being used (in your case, Google). It says that that information must be available via a TXT type DNS record with the host name of _domainconnect.<your domain name here>.
However, the docs alternatively allow for a CNAME type DNS record (CNAME is used as an alias record) with host name _domainconnect.<your domain name here> to point to another domain/subdomain that contains this TXT record with the record value the spec asks for. (Google does it the CNAME way with connect.domains.google.com. as the value.)
Whichever way this spec is done, the record value of this final TXT record should be a domain that you can do an HTTP GET request to, with the full URL being in the form of https://<the TXT record value>/v2/<your domain>/settings to get a JSON response that contains information about the DNS provider.
To see this in action:
If I go to a DNS lookup tool site like https://mxtoolbox.com/txtlookup.aspx, I can put the value of the CNAME record, connect.domains.google.com, in the search bar and see the corresponding TXT record, which has a record value of "domainconnect.googleapis.com". (Note: of course, when I use this value in an HTTP GET request in the next step, I'm going to strip off the double quotes.)
I should then be able to do an HTTP GET request to https://domainconnect.googleapis.com/v2/mydomain.de/settings and get a JSON response with information on Google as a DNS provider. I can see the JSON by just entering that URL in a browser URL bar. At the time of writing, assuming mydomain.de was a valid domain with Google Domains as its DNS provider, you should get:
{
"providerId": "domains.google.com",
"providerName": "Google Domains",
"providerDisplayName": "Google Domains",
"urlSyncUX": "https://domains.google.com/domainconnect",
"urlAPI": "https://domainconnect.googleapis.com"
}
And that entire journey was so that people/software can see who your DNS provider is, and some basic info about them, all via DNS. Phew...
Be advised that Google isn't the only big DNS provider that adheres to Domain Connect specs.
I'm trying to redirect multiple domain names to their corresponding landing pages on my website using name servers, but don't know where to start.
Example:
I have two domain names 1)ABC.com 2)123.com. I want to set the name servers of each domain to forward them to the landing page on my website, so ABC.com would redirect to MyWebsite.com/abc and 123.com would redirect to MyWebsite.com/123.
Any help as to where I could a general direction to make this happen?
DNS is solely responsible for the name 123.com to address 12.34.56.78 mapping. It has no concept of anything that happens beyond that. Via DNS you would need to point both names to the address of the web server.
Then on the web server, configure a site at abc.com and 123.com, with each site being redirected the appropriate place.
This way, the HTTP software will detect which domain name is requested and redirect it as required.
You basically need to follow the link shared in comments, but do that for each domain. - How do I redirect a domain to a specific "landing page"?
we have a saas web app, written in zend mvc (php) where users can enter their own domain name in their settings page.
When they enter e.g. www.customdomain.com we want this domain to redirect to our web application so we can serve up their own pages from our app.
We do the same already for subdomains by having a *.ourapp.com entry in our DNS configuration.
that works great for subdomains like customdomain.ourapp.com.
This doesn't seem to work for full domain names like www.customdomain.com.
What's the easiest way to have any domain address link to our application, so we can just read out the incoming domain name and act accordingly in our app?
For letting the DNS entry point at your servers:
Domain is already registered (and owned by the customer): Make him configure the CNAME entry to your server's IP. (Even google let this do the enduser by hand - so automating this might be hard)
Domain is free: Register it, configure the CNAME yourself (you own it)
If you only want a redirect, the user can upload a html file or .htaccess file, that performs the redirect. But this has to be done by the customer, too.
A domain name that we have is using google mail as its backend, but its not hosted anywhere (no website). How can I, through the registrar interface (I'm using 1&1), redirect ppl who type in http://mail.example.com to http://mail.google.com/a/example.com ?
I can create a subdomain and set its DNS/CNAME, but what do I put where? Also, if I make this change will it affect the existing mail delivery (for which everything is running fine presently).
It turns out it wasn't that tough... and the instructions are part of Google itself:
Dashboard -> Service settings: Email -> General:Web address -> Change URL
https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/example.com/CustomUrl?s=mail
Changing CNAME record
To use the custom URL mail.example.com, you must change the CNAME record with your domain host.
Sign in to oneandone.
Navigate to your DNS Management page. The location and name
of this page will vary by host, but
can generally be found in Domain
Management or Advanced Settings.
Find the CNAME settings and enter the following as the CNAME value
or alias:
mail
Set the CNAME destination to the following address:
ghs.googlehosted.com
Save changes with your domain host and click "I've completed
these steps" below.
You cannot redirect to a path (such as /a/example.com) using only DNS. DNS CNAME records can make mail.example.com/foo effectively point to mail.google.com/foo, but something more sophisticated will require HTTP redirects. This means you need someone hosting your web page for this to work.
Sorry.
If your registrar offers an "HTTP Redirect" option, you can use that. Some registrars do. If you use this, they're effectively running a minimal web server for you. Note that this may break SSL when users access your page via https://example.com.
Mail delivery is via MX records, which won't be affected by changes to other types of record (so long as you don't interfere with the DNS records for the domain's mail servers).