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I'm working on a site that only works if you type in www. Only the www subdomain has an A record. The bare/naked domain is unable to be given an A record. The naked domain can also not be given a DNS Alias. This means the site without "www" shows an error in your browser.

I'm trying to think through any creative solution that may solve this usability issue.

Would an htaccess rewrite rule such as:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

work in this scenario to force users to the www working site and to keep users from seeing an error in their browser?

I'm thinking it likely does NOT work because the htaccess file would only be accessed when users already typed in www (which has the A record). Is that thinking correct?

(Additional examples of htaccess code are in this thread) Redirect non-www to www in .htaccess

If this isn't a valid option, any other creative solutions that might work?

designertofullstack
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  • Why shouldn't it be possible to define a DNS record for the domain? – arkascha Aug 22 '22 at 18:14
  • The question does not really make sense. You are trying to redirect requests from the "non www" host to the www host of that domain/subdomain/whatever. But such requests will never reach the http server with any DNS record, how should they? Without an IP address to send the request to? – arkascha Aug 22 '22 at 18:15
  • Yes, @arkascha that's what I wanted to confirm. The htaccess route can not work if there is not an IP address set up (A record) for both the www.example.com subdomain and example.com domain. Thank you. This htacess solution is useful for setting a canonical choice, but not for forcing www when an A record is missing. – designertofullstack Aug 22 '22 at 18:17
  • Yes, correct. You did not, however, react to my first question. Have you really thought that trough? – arkascha Aug 23 '22 at 05:04

1 Answers1

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No, .htaccess rules won't work if the DNS isn't pointing to them. The only way to issue a redirect is by pointing the DNS to a web server that redirects.

CNAME records never work for the domain apex, so they are never an option. The only DNS records that will resolve a website for the domain apex are A records. I suspect that you are using a web host that doesn't give you an IP address to put into the A record, only a name. They probably warn that the IP address could change without warning. There are other possible solutions in this type of situation:

Let your web host be your DNS host

Many web hosts will offer to host your DNS for you. They can then keep your A and CNAME records up to date for you. They would be able to use A records at the APEX and change them as needed. If your web host offers this service, you would change your NS records at your DNS registrar to point to values given to you by your web host. Usually something like ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com.

Use ANAME or ALIAS records

Many DNS hosts now allow your to enter a name but serve it as an A record. The DNS host periodically (like every few minutes) looks up the IP address for the name and serves an A record with the current value. These records have different names at different DNS hosts, but they are usually called ANAME or ALIAS records. If your current DNS host doesn't offer this service, you could switch to a more capable DNS host that does so.

Use a third party redirect service

If your existing web host won't give you an IP address to use in an A record, you can use an alternate web host that will do so for the redirects. Most web hosting will give you an IP address to put into DNS records that won't change without notice. It is possible to find an alternate host for your domain apex and use that hosting only to do the redirect to www. Your www CNAME record would continue to point to your existing host.

Stephen Ostermiller
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  • Your response is precisely the creative solution I was hoping for! Thank you! The final option, "Use a third party redirect service," is the option we have available to us. Would you mind expanding on the redirect in this option? Could this be a .htaccess rewrite rule that forces the www (perhaps like in my original post)? In this case, it seems the new redirect server seamlessly grabs users who leave off the "www" and then redirects them via the rewrite rule to the live "www" website server. Correct? Is there another way to create the redirect that I should consider? – designertofullstack Aug 24 '22 at 21:20
  • Yes it could be done that way on a shared hosting provider. I use cloudflare to redirect entire domains which they handle under their free tier and provide https for. They could be a possibility but I'm not sure if they could handle just the domain Apex without also the www. – Stephen Ostermiller Aug 24 '22 at 21:43