Free dns with wildcard subdomains? - dns

Are there any free dns services i can use to access my local host over external ip that support wildcard domains? This way i can set up virtual hosts to serve the subdomain content based on subdomain name.
For example, suppose the free fqdn with dns service is:
example.com
Example.com - my server root, default vhost
Site1.example.com - loads site1 vhost
Site2.example.com - loads site2 vhost
*.example.com - i can create a vhost for whatever the wildcard value is and it'll work like the two above
I don't mind if the free fqdn is a top level domain. Example.aa.bb.cc is fine as long as i can set up *.example.aa.bb.cc
A free fqdn/dns without support for wildcard subdomains but has lots of free subdomains i could set up would be OK, but not preferred.
Also, dynamic dns is not a requirement. My external ip very rarely changes so i wouldn't mind updating it if it ever changes.
I know I'm asking for a lot for free. I don't mind buying a domain name but I'm trying to get away with free if i can.

You should consider to build your own domain server to handle the subdomain information, for example using Bind software. After that you need to submit your NS record to your domain register

Found a good one. dtdns.com is free and allows for wildcard subdomains for free.

Related

Heroku Naked SSL Custom Domain

I'm trying to find a current, up to date answer for setting up naked domain with Godaddy and Heroku SSL. My goal is for all pages to land on a secure page at https://www.example.com
https://www.example.com does go to a secure page.
example.com goes to an insecure page.
https://example.com does not work.
My current set up is as follows:
In heroku settings:
Domain Name | DNS Target
example.com | example.com.herokudns.com
www.example.com | www.my-domain.herokudns.com
Go Daddy Settings:
CNAME | www | www.example.com.herokudns.com
Forwarding settings:
Forward to: https:// | www.example.com
Yeah, it's a pretty stupid issue that some of the big DNS manager providers out there still have. The way to solve it is to have a server with an SSL certificate installed, and then point your naked domain to that static IP. The server then will redirect to the "www" version of your domain, which is now served under SSL by Heroku. Tedious.
If you don't want to do all that, just use https://www.nakedssl.com, which does exactly that – but automated (and for free for one domain).
Disclaimer: I'm part of the team that created NakedSSL, but I hope you take this as help and not as self-promotion. As explained above, the problem is as easy as tedious to solve, and I think NakedSSL is a pretty straight forward workaround.
Root domains on Heroku require the use of ALIAS ANAME or FLATTENING records.
Unfortunately, a number of popular DNS hosts such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, Google Domains, OVH, Hostinger and others do not support these types of records. Many of these Providers will tell you there is no such thing as ALIAS, ANAME or FLATTENING Records and many of these providers will tell you to set an A Record instead, however;
A Records do not work with Heroku for routing
A Records require static IP Addresses and static IP Addresses do not work with Heroku for routing, because Heroku (and many other cloud platforms) use dynamic IP's.
Instead, you can either:
Not use a naked domain and just use your www sub domain
Redirect/ Forward your HTTP root domain to your www sub domain. This won't work for your HTTPS root domain though
Use an Alternate DNS Provider. Heroku recommends the following: https://help.heroku.com/NH44MODG/my-root-domain-isn-t-working-what-s-wrong
Solved it.
Best way to get SSL set up is to use this package which automatically makes every page on your app SSL. Fantastic package. https://www.npmjs.com/package/force-ssl-heroku
Getting the naked domain set up with Godaddy easily: Set forwarding to your domain: https://www.my-domain.com. This will redirect non www to the correct place. :)
I believe naked subdomain or wildcards are not supported by heroku automated certs because of the let's encryption restrictions. So you need to set up a subdomain everytime you want to use Heroku's automatic certs.
ALSO VERY IMPORTANT! Don't forget to remove or edit any unsercured links to external assets. Otherwise browsers will jugde the page with those links unsecured as described in the Modzilla support page about mixed content.

How to create a subdomain and how do they work?

I would like to create a subdomain off of my main domain for accessing my raspberry pi at home. My domain register company charges £10 for every subdomain so I thought there might be an easier (and cheaper) way of creating one. It would also help if I knew a little more about them and how they are created.
DNS is built off of a hierarchy for scale-ability and/or for granularity.
If we take the a domain like www.stackoverflow.com. and break it down, here is what we get.
www - This is the host portion of the domain. It is either an A record or a CNAME and eventually points to an ip address.
stackoverflow - This is one of the domain levels. It has it's own DNS servers and config managed by the stackoverflow team. This allows that team to manage the entries specific to their needs.
com - This is called a TLD (top level domain). All other domains that end in .com have an entry on the "com" dns servers.
. - This is called the ROOT. There are 20 somodd root DNS servers scattered around the world. These servers are used to identify where the .com, .org, .edu, .gov, etc dns servers are.
From a client perspective what happens when you query www.stackoverflow.com is:
You query the . name servers to ask where the com dns servers are.
You query the com dns servers to ask where the stackoverflow dns servers are.
you query the stackoverflow dns servers to ask where www is.
A subdomain simply means that you add an additional layer of DNS servers in the mix so that you can add more scale-ability and/or granularity to the mix.
For example, if our dns name is: www.foo.stackoverflow.com we would now have the foo dns server layer.
Having said that, I do not think that you need a subdomain. You probably just need an additional DNS A record or CNAME. For example:
raspberry.stackoverflow.com instead of raspberry.foo.stackoverflow.
They should not charge extra for additional host entries (A record or CNAME), only for subdomains.

How will a CNAME DNS affect Google Engine

I'm hosting a clients site at client.mysite.com, but my client want to have its own domain, like www.clientsite.com.
With a CNAME configuration, I'll be able to hook my client domain to the content, but... considering I'm still hosting my clients content, which domain will be finally listed on Google with contents of client.mysite.com contents?
a) mysite.com
b) clientsite.com
Thanks for helping.
In the DNS hierarchy, the CNAME resource record will be attached to the clientside.com. A CNAME is simply a reference to the location of that site's A record. With that in mind, I believe mysite.com will be listed as hosting the data.
Does your client want it to appear under his name?
If so, then this should not be solved using DNS (well, not only using DNS).
If your client wants to get the content listed under his domain name, the best way to do this, is to add their name to your server.
Then point client domain name to your server.
The best way to do the pointing (when also considering SEO)
is to make an webforward (301 permanent) from the root, to the www
and make the www subdomain point to the ressource.
(Or vice verca)
IF you are using the example above (webforward on root) you can use a cname instead of an A record to point the domain name. However do not add a cname to the root of a domain (effectively shutting down your domain name).
So-
Short Answer:
client.mysite.com will have the content (also according to google).
Any attempt to obfuscate this is black hat or grey hat ;)
a better way of doing it is to simply setup the clients domain name on your server.
Then point only one hostname to the server. Server host/headers will take care of the rest.
Setup in DNS
# webforward 301 www
www a or Cname to server
Quick rules:
NEVER put Cname on the root of a domain
Only allow 1 hostname to show content (can be done both as explained above via DNS/webforward or via server configurations)

Using DNS to redirect to another URL with a path [closed]

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I'm trying to redirect a domain to another via DNS.
I know that using IN CNAME it's posible.
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com.
What i need is a redirection with a path. When someone types www.proof.com, it should take them to to www.proof-two.com/path/index.htm
I know it can be done using Web Server facilities, but I need DNS redirection.
Is this possible?
No, what you ask is not possible. DNS is name resolution system and knows nothing about HTTP.
if you use AWS, a redirect like
mail.foo.com --> mail.google.com/a/foo.com
can be setup as follows:
in s3, create an empty bucket "mail.foo.com"
under Properties -> Static Website Hosting, set "redirect all requests to: mail.google.com/a/foo.com"
in route53, create an A record "mail.foo.com"
enable "alias", and set alias target to the "mail.foo.com" bucket
not a pure DNS solution, but it works ;)
But be aware of, the redirect skips all the URL parameters e.g.: ...?param1=value1&param2=value2
I realize this is an old thread but FWIW, incase someone else is looking for a way to do this.
While dns does not understand the path portion of the url, it will understand subdomains, so instead of:
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com/path/index.htm
You could use:
www.proof.com IN CNAME proof.proof-two.com
then go to wherever you host proof-two.com and set it to point proof.proof-two.com to www.proof-two.com/path/index.htm.
~ there's always more than one way to skin a cat
Some providers allow this but there are no "pure" DNS solutions since DNS doesn't know anything about the protocol you're using and redirects are a feature from HTTP.
For OVH, see : https://docs.ovh.com/gb/en/domains/redirect-domain-name/
You will have to use the control panel to add your redirection. It will update your DNS zone accordingly.
Let's consider you created a redirection from foo.bar.com to foo2.bar.com/path. OVH keeps the url paths and parameters. So if you try to access foo.bar.com/hello?foo=bar, you'll be redirected to foo2.bar.com/path/hello?foo=bar.
I have a personal project that might help you in solving this issue.
It's an open source redirect solution that allows you to redirect your domain just changing your DNS settings. Link of the project: https://redirect.center/.
To redirect www.proof.com to www.proof-two.com keeping the URL parameters, just set your www DNS entry on proof.com:
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com.opts-uri.redirect.center.
Really it's easy with redirect.center
If you want create a CNAME as :
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com/path/index.htm
using redirect.center your CNAME look as canonical mode as:
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com.opts-slash.path.opts-slash.index.htm.redirect.center.
Now if you want redirect to https website you can add this option:
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com.opts-slash.path.opts-slash.index.htm.opts-https.redirect.center.
Now you can create a CNAME with the canonical mode with slash in your destiny page.
To answer the original question, no, what you want is not possible using only DNS (like everyone has stated). In addition to everything mentioned already, another option is to use a URL redirection service. These types of services can enable you to configure many different types of URL redirects depending on your needs. For example:
Forward a domain apex to a www. subdomain or vice versa
Forward a collection of domain names to a single destination (useful for forwarding domain misspellings, old company names, etc.)
Forward specific domain names to deeply linked pages (like what the OP wants)
A service that does this is EasyRedir. Full disclosure: I developed EasyRedir. There are certainly other options out there though, so I encourage you to have a look around.
DNS won't redirect the path portion of a URL, so that won't be possible.
Adding
www.proof.com IN CNAME www.proof-two.com
will direct access to www.proof.com to www.proof-two.com, where you will need to use web server config to direct users to the appropriate page.
A related work concluded all the below:
Problem:
http://a.com/p1/p2.html should go to http://B.com/p1/p2.html
today, but later when configured manually/automatically, the same
http://a.com/p1/p2.html should go to http://C.com/p1/p2.html
Answers:
DNS - converts name to IP address
Though it can do a lot of redirects, always output is IP address
DNS does not understand the path or protocol part of URL, understands domain part only, that is, a.com only is converted to IP address, so when you hit http://a.com/p1/p2.html may be converted to http://152.132.121.11/p1/p2.html
if you configure wrong in DNS, then you will get 152.132.121.11 (not http://152.132.121.11/p1/p2.html), so you would get some 400s error (400, 403, etc.)
Redirection - this is http://a.com/p1/p2.html can be converted to http://b.com/p1/p2.html
All the methods like GET, POST can work, with if any headers and body, but there is a web server is involved, it could be point of failure, so scalability and availability will be key
If you are on AWS, Route 53 -> API Gateway is possible though custom domains, internally using the Cloud front
It is possible with Amazon Certification Manager, AWS Gateway custom domains & Route53, note the us-east-1 restriction on ACM
Hope that helps someone
I will suppose you have this scenario: You have a unique webserver hosting various websites, each one is supposed to be presented by a separated domain:
http://example.com/customer1/website/page1.html
http://example.com/customer2/website/page2.html
so, the page1.html should be served by www.customer1.com and so on.
create a subdomain inside the example.com dns server (your webserver):
customer1.example.com
in your apache virtual server settings, map the subdomain to the directory that contain the web site for your customer #1, like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
SetEnv PAGE_ID "customer1"
ServerName customer1.example.com
ServerAlias www.customer1.com
DocumentRoot /your/local/path/webserver/customer1
</VirtualHost>
please note the value for "ServerAlias", it is important for the next step-
at this point, you should be able to navigate to your customer1 website by browsing to:
customer1.example.com
In the DNS settings for customer1.com you must make a CNAME record:
CNAME=www
LOCATION=customer1.example.com
Now, you're enabled to use: www.customer1.com.
My solution to this problem was pretty simple and straight forward. All you need is an IIS server running inside the domain.
Setup CNAME in DNS to point to the IIS server, using host names in IIS to resolve several sites on a single IIS server. I'm using the same IIS server to farm out a few sub domains to external sites.
Then in IIS setup setup redirection for that site to go to your offsite site/path, in my case it was our hosted catalog that I wanted catalog.ourdomain.com to go to. From here all the tweaking is done in IIS. Be sure to enable anonymous authentication so traffic will not be blocked.
While as almost everyone stated already - it's impossible using just DNS. As a workaround I would suggest trying NGINX (http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/request_processing.html).
TL;DR - In NGINX you can create multiple virtual servers that can redirect your request based on the server name.
Ex. http://first.my-server.com redirect to place A and http://second.my-server.com redirect to place B, while both share a single physical server.
You can use htaccess rewrite mod, rewrite to the subfolder if the user is requesting one specific domain not the other.
Of course it is possible to redirect, with the following trick:
Create a new standard primary zone
Name it same as the fictive URL that you want to redirect to
Ensure that this fictive name is different than any AD DNS name
Create A record with following entries:
blank.......................A............................ip-addr-2
www.........................A............................ip-addr-2
What we have here is redirection, essentially. A valid URL will resolve based on the existing DNS primary DNS zone. A fictive URL will be redirected to ip-addr-2. What is important is that the name of this entry is blank, so it will fall down to the next entry in the record and redirect to ip-addr-2
Everyone has already stated this, and I just want to give you another option to a service that can help you. www.301redirect.it is a free service that can redirect your domain (with wildcard) to any destination url.
I want to add a disclosure as well: I'm the developer behind this service and there is a other options out there.

How to redirect different sub domain requests to different servers

Under my domain, one of the subdomain must be directed to one server that hosts the relevant applications, and the rest must be directed to another server that hosts the relavant applications.
So, any requests to the url appa.example.com\* must be directed to one server, and any requests to the url appb.example.com\* must be directed to another server.
The issue now is how to configure the Apache configuration on both servers-- maybe using configuration like ProxyPass or ProxyPassReverse so that they all the incoming requests can be directed correctly at the correct server?
Edit to make the question clearer.
The place to link an url to an IP (server) is the DNS.
For example if server A is at 1.2.3.4 and server B at 5.6.7.8 you link appa.example.com to 1.2.3.4 and appb.example.com to 5.6.7.8.
But if both servers are behind a firewall (with a single external IP address) you have to perform some tricks. (And you are probably looking for these tricks).
Have a look at An Introduction to Redirecting URLs on an Apache Server.
I've done the same thing for my workplace (a University). Our primary website it hosted elsewhere but part of the site (student registration system) is hosted onsite.
What I did was to create a Authoritative (A) DNS Record (reg.domain.com) and made it point to the IP of our onsite server. And that did the trick!!!
Here's a screenshot of the same from my domain CP (domain and IP masked for obvious reasons)...
alt text http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5069/stiuaregrecord.jpg
It's essentially the same as what you're trying to do. Give it a shot and see :)
In the DNS records/manager for the parent domain of the intended subdomain:
point the subdomain name at the to-be host servers IP address, then ...
... Then ...
In the host server DNS and or server-software config: direct the subdomain to the website app. You can achieve this by one of: -
manually edit the DNS records,
park the subdomain and point it at the website document root folder, or
add the domain and subdomain (domain will never be used since its not pointed at applicable server). Point them both at the document root for your now subdomained (if there is such a word) website app

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