CNAME forwarding question

This should be dead simple, but for the life of me I can't seem to get it right…

Have a blog @ wordpress.com, lets say bloggy.wordpress.com. Have a domain name, bloggy.com. Just trying to point the domain to the blog using a cname.

So, both bloggy.com and www.bloggy.com should point to bloggy.wordpress.com. Have tried a CNAME entry with www.bloggy.com aliased to bloggy.wordpress.com, which Linode DNS manager turns into www. But, if I hit www.bloggy.com, it seems to go into essentially a loop…

I have no A entries at all, as this should be just a staright forward.

Any help for this clueless user?

Thanks!

7 Replies

Works fine for me in both Chrome and Firefox. Maybe your DNS cache needs to be flushed. If you're on XP, open a Command Prompt and run ipconfig/flushdns, then restart your browser. Otherwise, maybe your ISP is caching it, and you just have to wait.

You can check whether the DNS is set up correctly with the host command:

$ host www.bloggy.com
www.bloggy.com is an alias for bloggy.wordpress.com.
bloggy.wordpress.com has address 12.34.56.78

You should see something similar to this.

The other half is that Wordpress must be set up to respond to requests for www.bloggy.com. This is known as name-based virtual hosting or, on wordpress.com, domain mapping.

So here is what my host looks like:

> root|production[~]=> host www.bloggy.com

www.bloggy.com CNAME bloggy.wordpress.com

bloggy.wordpress.com CNAME lb.wordpress.com

lb.wordpress.com A 74.200.243.251

lb.wordpress.com A 76.74.254.123

lb.wordpress.com A 76.74.255.123

lb.wordpress.com A 72.233.2.59

lb.wordpress.com A 72.233.2.58

lb.wordpress.com A 74.200.243.253

I think the problem lies on my end with my dns settings here at linode. Here are my settings. I have no A records at all, have the linode nameservers, and just the one CNAME record:

Hostname: www

Aliases To: bloggy.wordpress.com

TTL: 14440 (4 hours)

Problem remains with hitting www.bloggy.com and it going into essentailly an endless loop it appears. Should there be an A record of any type? How would I also redirect bloggy.com to bloggy.wordpress.com?

Anyone see anything wrong with them?

No, you're not pointing to Linode name servers:

bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns1.webfaction.com.
bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns2.webfaction.com.
bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns3.webfaction.com.
bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns4.webfaction.com.
;; Received 179 bytes from 192.43.172.30#53(I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET) in 149 ms

@BarkerJr:

No, you're not pointing to Linode name servers:

bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns1.webfaction.com.
bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns2.webfaction.com.
bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns3.webfaction.com.
bloggy.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns4.webfaction.com.
;; Received 179 bytes from 192.43.172.30#53(I.GTLD-SERVERS.NET) in 149 ms

For business reasons, I can't post the actual correct domain… bloggy.com is just a random name I choose. The domain in question is indeed pointing at linode.

People are trying to help, but by disguising your domain name and using one that actually exists you're sending everyone down the wrong track - example.com is reserved specifically for use in cases like this.

But… I work here so I get to cheat. :)

I looked at your domain and the www.example.com is pointing at wordpress, but they are redirecting to example.com which doesn't exist. You need to tell wordpress that your blog address is www.example.com.

-James

Ah, sorry about that, thought it would be such a simple issue that it wouldn't involve any actual network stuff, just a quick text response.

Thanks,

Paul

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