Why do I have to use www

[Gwendys]

Hello, My fiancee and I have a PRO Smugmug account. We are using our domain name, www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com). We have done the CNAME thing. Our domain is at godaddy. The problem I am having is that you must put in www when typing in the domain name to be directed to our smugmug account, if you don't and just type in davehobday.com you end up at a parked page at godaddy. I really don't like this since many people today do not type in the www to get to websites. Is there a way make it so that typing either www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com) or davehobday.com will direct you to our smugmug account?

When doing the CNAME stuff at godaddy I tried leaving the www points to @ but when I do that you can't get to the smugmug account by typing in either www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com) or davehobday.com. They both then take you to a parked page with godaddy.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide! I will need instructions since my fiancee will not give out his user name and password to anyone since we have so many other domain names and other hosting hosted there etc. Sincerely, Gwen

www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com)
www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com)

I just wanted to note that we have changed our domain name to www.amberbrookephoto.com (http://www.amberbrookephoto.com)

[devbobo]

Hi Gwendys,

Welcome to dgrin :wave

To get davehobday.com to work, you need to setup an A record to ip address 63.81.134.23

Cheers,

David

[Gwendys]

Thank you David! I will try it!!!! Sincerely, Gwen

"To get davehobday.com to work, you need to setup an A record to ip address 63.81.134.23"

[Andy]

Thank you David! I will try it!!!! Sincerely, Gwen


Yes but remember, don't change the CNAME record.

:wave welcome to Dgrin!

[Gwendys]

Hi Andy and David, I copied and pasted the ip address you posted into my address bar and hit enter and it does not take me to www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com) but to www.smugmug.com (http://www.smugmug.com) will this change when I put it in as AHost? Thanks again, Gwen

www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com)

www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com)


Yes but remember, don't change the CNAME record.

:wave welcome to Dgrin!

[devbobo]

Hi Andy and David, I copied and pasted the ip address you posted into my address bar and hit enter and it does not take me to www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com) but to www.smugmug.com (http://www.smugmug.com) will this change when I put it in as AHost? Thanks again, Gwen

www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com)

www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com)
yes it will :D

well the ip address won't directly, but it will resolve correctly to davehobday.com

[Gwendys]

Thanks again David, One other thing. Will the AHOST cause the same problems with the shopping cart and memorizing galleries etc. for visitors to our site that fowarding the domain name would have?

www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com)
www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com)


yes it will :D

well the ip address won't directly, but it will resolve correctly to davehobday.com

[Andy]

Thanks again David, One other thing. Will the AHOST cause the same problems with the shopping cart and memorizing galleries etc. for visitors to our site that fowarding the domain name would have?

www.dg-photos.smugmug.com (http://www.dg-photos.smugmug.com)
www.davehobday.com (http://www.davehobday.com)
No you should be fine :D
But remember, do NOT delete your CNAME record. The reason we insist on CNAME, is that our IP address can change. If that happens, you'd have to change your A-record designation. But CNAME will always always work :D
Cheers

[Gwendys]

Thanks Andy and David, I have made the changes at godaddy to both AHost and CName and it appears to be working fine! Thank you so much. I wish I had posted here yesterday when I was trying to figure this out for hours! I did try a search several different times but either couldn't find it or didn't understand what I was seeing when I did find it! Again, Thank you both so much!!!! Sincerely, Gwen :barb :bow

No you should be fine :D
But remember, do NOT delete your CNAME record. The reason we insist on CNAME, is that our IP address can change. If that happens, you'd have to change your A-record designation. But CNAME will always always work :D
Cheers

[James S]

Hi Gwendys,

Welcome to dgrin :wave

To get davehobday.com to work, you need to setup an A record to ip address 63.81.134.23

Cheers,

David


hmmmm.....done this but it didn't work.

[Andy]

hmmmm.....done this but it didn't work.
working fine for me, IE, Safari, FF

What did you do to set this up? Who is your domain host? We can help if you wish, just write our Support Heroes, help@smugmug.com if you'd like us to look into your domain host for you :thumb

[James S]

Well I use godaddy. Went in and set up an A Name for IP Address 63.81.134.23

When I type just amstudiosonline.com is goes to a search page and not my website.

[Andy]

Well I use godaddy. Went in and set up an A Name for IP Address 63.81.134.23

When I type just amstudiosonline.com is goes to a search page and not my website.
I even just checked on IE6 - all is good :)

Simple ping test validates:

andy-williams-computer-2:~ Andy$ ping amstudiosonline.com
PING amstudiosonline.com (63.81.134.23): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 63.81.134.23: icmp_seq=0 ttl=244 time=89.719 ms

What browser are you using?

[James S]

What browser are you using?

When I type just "amstudiosonline.com" in Firefox 1.5 and in IE 7 I get some search webpage and not my webpage.

[Andy]

When I type just "amstudiosonline.com" in Firefox 5.0 and in IE 7 I get some search webpage and not my webpage.gotta be a browser setting, rex. Your a-record is setup just fine...

What's Firefox 5.0?

[James S]

Sorry 1.5 I changed it.


I will check my browser settings

[James S]

yep checked it on the wife's computer. Works fine. I will have to see if I have something set wrong or if it is just a flaw in the new IE 7

Thanks for your help Andy