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I want to change an A record of my root domain www.domain.com to CNAME dyndns.org.

But the cpanel gives me the following error:

already has a SOA record.
You may not mix CNAME records with other records for the same name.

Can you please explain what this means? And how do I fix it?

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  • are you kidding me? why the down vote? some people just enjoy down-voting without writing a single word?
    – user113400
    Jul 11, 2012 at 7:06
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    @MadHatter how can it be duplicate of something asked two years after? :) if you want the other question is duplicate of this.
    – user113400
    May 4, 2015 at 10:28
  • The other is a canonical question. Look around SF; once we have a canonical question on a given subject, it is normal to close all other occurrences of that question as duplicates. Note, however, that all closers other than me closed this because it's cpanel-related, and most web-panel-admin questions are (now) also OT here.
    – MadHatter
    May 4, 2015 at 10:29
  • @MadHatter do as you please, I'm banned from here anyways :) necromancy goes the long way though.
    – user113400
    May 4, 2015 at 11:12
  • @MadHatter that doesn't have sense. It a good question. It's a new way to ask probably something more canonical, but I think that a place like this is to resolve life to people not to show how much they know. A question like this maximize alternatives to find a solutions. Probably a better alternative should be an edition de top answer with a link to canonical "question" with a canonical "answers" . This help a lot to know 'what is the must to be known' to solve in any web-panel-admin. It's not bad a cpanel related post, because it could help to solved fast for cpanel-related users.
    – molavec
    May 28, 2018 at 17:01

1 Answer 1

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Just to clarify, www.example.com is not the root of the domain, example.com is.

A CNAME on www.example.com is valid, but a CNAME on example.com is not - cpanel is right to reject the attempt. A CNAME record can only exist on a name when no other record type exists for that name, since it indicates that all lookups (of any type, not just A) for that name should look up against a different name instead. You must always have at a minimum an SOA record and an NS record on your root name (example.com), so a CNAME conflicts with the existence of those records.

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  • to overcome this problem, can I CNAME www.example.com to dyndns server, and in some way redirect example.com to www.example.com ?
    – user113400
    Jul 10, 2012 at 21:38
  • @SandroDzneladze Yes, but that depends on having a mechanism to perform the redirect. Do you have a web server available that can be pointed at through an A record, which can then redirect to the www name?
    – Shane Madden
    Jul 10, 2012 at 21:41
  • yes I have hostgator account where I'm setting up cname records to point to my homeserver with dynamic IP. What would be google safe way of redirecting example.com to www.example.com?
    – user113400
    Jul 10, 2012 at 21:43
  • @SandroDzneladze A 301 redirect is the search friendly way to do that; it informs the search engine that the redirect is "permanent".
    – Shane Madden
    Jul 10, 2012 at 21:50