pretty straight forward question, the title say it all - "www." refuses to resolve to the website, I'm aware that it isn't necessary and I've never been a big stickler for using the "www" but I have a finicky secretary on our committee so thought I should do something about it just to keep the peace. Please find attached my DNS record so as you can see if there are any errors in it - I've left the domain key and the spf txt entries out of the image. I have 2 other sites on the same DNS server and the "www" resolves fine on those.
Have you checked the /etc/bind/pri.polyfidelity.org.au file to see if its correct and has a www entry? Also check the same file on any other external DNS servers you might have to see if the www entry exists.
What the heck is that period after the www for in your entry above? Look at your other A records. Do any others have a period '.' at the end? Try deleting and recreating your www A record in ISPConfig
I recreated the A record but the period was still in /etc/bind/pri.polyfidelity.org.au so I removed it there, rebooted so I guess it is a case of wait and see if it propagates OK.
That did the trick - thanks! - Still not sure how it got there in the first place. Again these forums have come to my rescue - thanks to all for such a great resource...
The problem now is anytime you make a change in ISPConfig3 to your DNS for that zone it will add it back in unless you figure out why it got put in to start with. Technically www should be a CNAME to polyfidelity.org.au. <- With the .
Thanks for that - I have now changed it to "CNAME" instead of an "A" record. Any idea why some folk recommend an "A" record?
The reason for CNAME's is really simple. Things like www to the root domain are no brainers only with the exception that the root domain is being used for another purpose (which again is a horrible practice but still happens). That way if you change the IP address on your root domain the www just follows. We host 1000's of sites that all use the same load balancer IP address. Imagine if all those sites were setup as A records. To change the IP address of the load balancer would require changing ALL those A records. But with CNAME we change 1 A record and walla. The argument that a CNAME takes an additional lookup is so trivial it should not even be mentioned. That is like saying that credit card terminals need to be upgraded to a OC12 from a 300 baud modem. They are very simple text only transactions usually only a packet in size so the extra lookup is extremely trivial. It is a DNS best practice to use CNAME especially for WWW.
Thanks for that great explanation it clearly dispels some of the ideas behind using an A record that I have come across. Another reason why I love these forums - you get concise answers.
