Support for bare domain names

Modified on Fri, 7 Dec, 2018 at 3:23 PM

Currently, Fasterize does not support root domain names (without subdomain). You must migrate your site to a fully qualified domain name to use Fasterize.

The connection Fasterize works by pointing a domain to a CNAME record. We use CNAME records to handle the case of unavailability of our platform. It is not possible to connect Fasterize to a Type A DNS record.

DNS specification prevents CNAME records on the root domain

The technical constraint preventing us from managing the root domains is at the DNS protocol dating back to 1987. At that time, the Cloud service idea did not exist. Thus, the DNS RFC prohibits the use of a CNAME DNS record on a root domain. Technically, the root domain could be a CNAME but the RFC indicates that if a CNAME record is placed on a domain, it can not have other entries. This is a problem since most sites have an MX record for emails, a NS and SOA record.

Solution 1: Use a DNS provider that handles aliases

In front of this DNS limitation, some DNS providers introduced the notion of aliases. This is a way of specifying a CNAME record, in an interface, that will be resolved into an A record by the provider.

Source: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains#configuring-dns-for-root-domains and https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2014/05/alias-type-dns-records- cname-for-functionality-on-naked-domains.html

Solution 2: Migrate the root domain to the www domain

Follow the instructions in the Setup Guide so that Fasterize can serve your FQDN, for example www.example.com.
Configure your server to do a redirection (called "301 redirection") from your root domain name to the fully qualified domain name. This way, when a user goes to the root domain name of your site http://example.com on their browser, your server will redirect the browser to fetch the content on the fully qualified domain name http://www.example.com. For Apache: Add the following lines to the file .htaccess
```
RewriteEngine On

   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com

   RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
```
For Nginx: Add the following lines to the file nginx.conf
```
server {

   listen 80;

   server_name example.com;

   rewrite ^/(.*) http://www.example.com/$1 permanent;
```
Set up your fully qualified domain name http://www.example.com as the preferred domain used by Google. This allows Google to index and redirect users directly to the site powered by Fasterize. To specify the preferred domain:
1. Log on to Webmaster Tools and click on your site.
2. Below Site Configuration , click Settings .
3. In the Preferred Domain section , select the FQDN option.