Question
How to create a CNAME Record for the root domain?
- Posted on October 11, 2019
- DNS
Asked by timoDjatomika
Hello.
My question is how to create a CNAME Record for the root domain “example.com”.
I’ve already looked at this tutorial here: https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/networking/dns/how-to/manage-records/
They wrote that I should use the “@” sign. Unfortunately when I try the “@” sign in the Hostname field I get the error: “Invalid Hostname”.
I wanna create the following alias:
example.com is an alias of foo.whatever.com
Thanks for the help !
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Hey,
The reason you can’t enter it in the interface is because the DNS standard doesn’t allow CNAME for the root record. Root record always has to be A.
See more:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-cant-a-domain-s-root-be-a-cname-8cbab38e5f5c/
To consolidate your records people usually go the other way… foo.example.com is an alias of example.com
I’ve this Option in Namecheap…
But in Digital Ocean, they won’t allow us to Create CNAME for Root Domain.
if Your Domain is in Namecheap or any Domain Panel…
And Hosting is in Digital Ocean…
Then, I would suggest you to…
Remove Your Digital Ocean NS1, NS2, NS3 DNS Values ( Name Servers ) from Domain Panel…
Then, Create A Records to Your Digital Ocean Server IP
Also, Create CNAME from your Domain Panel…
Majority of the People, Including me…
Buying Domain from Namecheap, and from there Creates Name Server for Digital ocean to point Domain to the DO Server.
And Then, We Create All Values in Digital Ocean Panel…
That’s Good in some cases, but when we face issues like this… the old school method is Good…
According to this blog post: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-cant-a-domain-s-root-be-a-cname-8cbab38e5f5c/
I shouldn’t use the CNAME for the root domain. Some DNS Providers implemented a workaround (e.g. Cloudflare) so thats the reason why it worked for my other domain (using Cloudfront to host a website and Cloudflare as my DNS Provider).
I think digitalocean decided not to implement such a workaround because of reasons that I don’t know (maybe they wanna stick to a standard???)