Redirect www from DNS records

Question

Related to this question: What’s the point in having “www” in a URL?

How can I do a “www” redirection form a DNS record level? I don’t want to tweak apache or IIS to achieve this.

Answer 1

Only through web server. DNS is not suitable if you want to domain redirection.

Domain redirection:

• HTTP 3xx response
• refresh meta tag
• JavaScript redirects

All techniques use web server.

Answer 2

you cannot do redirection in DNS however you can define CNAME entry for www

Answer 3

If your web server is configured in meaningful way, you can just add two records that point to same server. Usually it's not important to have specific address in user's address bar (what is the difference if user sees www.example.com or example.com?).

As already answered, you can't redirect client on DNS level. In web server, you don't have to modify web server configuration, if both virtual hosts (with and without www) point to place where you can put your own scripts. For example, in PHP you can just write

Header("Location: http://example.com");

to redirect visitors to example.com (without www).