I've a query with regards to CNAME record, can I have a CNAME as different domain name? Ex. I've a website example.com, can I create a CNAME with example.net? So, irrelevant of what end user types (either example.com or example.net) they should always reach example.com
2 Answers
Two issues collide here. The first is can a CNAME point to a different domain, to which the answer is yes, that is perfectly acceptable.
The second, though, is that in the case of your example, you cannot use a CNAME at all, because you cannot use a CNAME at the apex (aka root) of a domain. foo.example.net
can be a CNAME; example.net
cannot.
-
This may be dangerous to suggest to inexperienced admins, but there are
ALIAS
andANAME
records which can be attached to the root domain and provide similar behavior to aCNAME
. With that said, make sure you know what you are doing before deploying these types of records. Aug 18, 2016 at 7:34 -
1@Brennen It also needs to be mentioned that
ALIAS
andANAME
are not record types defined by the standards. They are custom behavior in certain server implementations.– Andrew BAug 19, 2016 at 2:42
If you're just trying to redirect example.net web site visitors to example.com , that's what you should do. Point example.net A DNS record to example.com's IP address. After that, you have a couple of options;
-Create a new website on your host that accepts example.net visitors and redirect them using HTML/Javascript in your index page , or using your server's redirection capabilities.
-On your single website, check to see if visitors' URL matches example.net and redirect them to example.com using Javascript in your index page.
Pick one.