DigitalOcean using SSL to serve NgInx Backend on Subodmain

Hi there,

It sounds like you’re on the right track. Here are the steps you should follow:

1. Setup the A Records: You’ll need to set up DNS A records for each subdomain to point to the IP address of the server that will handle it.

   For www.maindomain.com, the A record should point to the IP address of your cPanel hosting. For api.maindomain.com, the A record should point to the IP address of your DigitalOcean droplet.

2. Configure the Servers: On each server, you’ll need to configure the web server (like Nginx or Apache) to handle requests for its respective subdomain.

   On your cPanel server, you’ll set up a domain or subdomain for www.maindomain.com.

   On your DigitalOcean droplet, you’ll configure Nginx to handle requests for api.maindomain.com. You’ll need to set up a server block in your Nginx configuration for api.maindomain.com and restart Nginx.

3. Setup SSL: For each subdomain, you’ll need to get an SSL certificate and install it on the respective server. You can use Let’s Encrypt to get a free SSL certificate.

   For the cPanel server, cPanel has built-in support for Let’s Encrypt, which you can use to get and install an SSL certificate for www.maindomain.com.

   For the DigitalOcean droplet, you can use Certbot to get a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for api.maindomain.com. You’ll then need to configure Nginx to use this SSL certificate.

As for the dig +short command returning two IP addresses, it’s possible that you have an old DNS record that hasn’t fully propagated out of the system yet. DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to fully propagate. If you’ve made the changes recently, you might just need to wait a bit longer.

If you’ve waited and you’re still seeing two IP addresses, you might want to double-check your DNS configuration to make sure you don’t have an extra record set up for the subdomain.

Best,

Bobby