DNS problem (?)

How to make www.mydomain.com be the same as mydomain.com?

[glauber]

Hello,

this is a somewhat stupid question, but please bear with me. We're having a high number of people fail to reach our web site because they enter

http://mydomain.com

instead of

http://www.mydomain.com

(i.e. they forget the Ws)!

The way our DNS is set up, the A record for mydomain.com points to the main DNS server for the domain. Our DNS admin thinks this is the only way this can be set up.

I know other sites have it right (i.e.: [yahoo.com...] takes you to the same place as [yahoo.com)....] How is this done?

glauber

[mivox]

Well, I'm not a server administrator, but the main two hosting companies I've worked with both return a site when either www.domain.com or domain.com is entered... They're small companies too, so it's not something expansive or fancy that only the big boys can do.

They both run Linux servers (Apache, etc. pretty standard set-up). If you'd like to contact them and ask how they do it, StickyMail me and I'll sneak you some contact emails... Then you can forward the info to your admin... or you may just want to trade in your admin for someone more knowledgeable.

[glauber]

Well, i just heard from our DNS admin, and it turns out that having the "A" record for the domain point to the DNS server itself is part of this company's practice, but not a requirement. We're getting it fixed right now as i type this.

Thanks!

g

[mivox]

> part of this company's practice, but not a requirement

That's what I figured... pretty foolish practice, if you ask me. Part of a host's job, IMHO, is to make the hosting service something that makes it *easier* for clients to drive traffic tot heir sites. That sort of DNS set-up certainly doesn't meet that criteria.

Glad you're getting it fixed!