can't access my site with out www in front

AHPPhotography · March 18, 2015

Does anyone know what I have to do to fix this? if you go to www.adamhaysphotography.com it works but if you go to adamhaysphotography.com it won't.. Is it a setting on my hosting or a setting on Smugmug? Thanks for your help guys.

-Adam

Allen · March 18, 2015

There is a setting on your domain host for this. It's all explained on the help page. At the moment I can't recall what it is.
I think it is the A record.

AHPPhotography · March 18, 2015

Thanks Allen, I think your right, I remember reading something bout the "A" record.

Allen · March 18, 2015

This is as close as I could find but says "There is no need to set up an A Record". This is completely opposite what we were told years ago.
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93340-custom-hostname

AHPPhotography · March 18, 2015

that video makes it complicated. lol I still don't know why I have to put www. Oh well.

denisegoldberg · March 18, 2015

AHPPhotography wrote: »

that video makes it complicated. lol I still don't know why I have to put www. Oh well.

That help page is a little confusing. It says:

Within the domain forwarding area, point the version of your domain address without the www to the address with the www:
example.com > www.example.com

• Using a subdomain to point at SmugMug? There is no need to set up an A Record.

You aren't using a subdomain so you need to follow the line before that tells you to use domain forwarding.

You need to forward your domain without the www to the domain with the www.

--- Denise

AHPPhotography · March 18, 2015

Allen wrote: »

There is a setting on your domain host for this. It's all explained on the help page. At the moment I can't recall what it is.
I think it is the A record.

denisegoldberg wrote: »

That help page is a little confusing. It says:

You aren't using a subdomain so you need to follow the line before that tells you to use domain forwarding.

You need to forward your domain without the www to the domain with the www.

--- Denise

Thanks Denise. I will give that a shot. That makes sense.

Tom Foster · March 19, 2015

Yep, fairly easy to set up as has been said. I just wanted to add that it sometimes takes the DNS changes a wee while to propagate which means that if you make the right changes as have been described above it still might not work straight away.
It normally doesn't take too long but from past experience the time taken till changes are 'live' can be very variable!

AHPPhotography · March 19, 2015

adding www in front of the domain name seemed to work. Now both www.adamhaysphotography.com and adamhaysphotography.com seem to work. tricky little tweaks.

Thanks so much for your help guys.

-Adam

Ferguson · March 19, 2015

Be aware that Smugmug in various places is going to change your URL's back to have www in front. This went around a couple times in the past, and if I recall it had something to do with their caching service insisting on it. I'm not sure since they changed away from Akamai if that's still true (i.e. the need) but it is still happening for my site.

can't access my site with out www in front

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