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by achew22 5638 days ago
It is really not a good idea to let your naked record go to a 3rd party. If you need your root to be an A name, go with a DNS provider that will do URL redirects. If you trust them with DNS resolution of your domain you can trust them to not go crazy with your root record.

EDIT: If you are looking for a host that will do this, http://NameCheap.com is how I do it but I understand GoDaddy and Hover does it too. Seriously... go with a reputable registrar that has these simple features it will pay off in the end.
2 comments
awormus 5638 days ago
I agree with this 100% If anyone wants to implement something like this on a server which you have control over, here is the mod_rewrite line which enables this "service":

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

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bradleyjoyce 5638 days ago
when I saw someone retweet about this service in my stream it was a bit confusing... can't really see the purpose myself, when you, as you mention, you can handle this within the confines of your own registrar.

I'm curious as to why the developer felt the need to make this.

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awormus 5638 days ago
I wrote this "service" and the answer to why I did it is three-fold. 1. I had used 2 services, blogger and shopify, which didn't support pointing naked domain names. 2. It took all of 10 minutes and 3. I somehow landed on an epic domain name.

The long answer is that I run a platform for high-availability sites. I don't want to manage the client's DNS and I want to have the flexibility to instantly move sites from server to server. The answer, is to setup a CNAME and have the clients point their primary CNAME (www) to a host where you control the DNS.

www.example.com CNAME to example.myhostingservice.com. example.myhostingservice.com would then either point to an IP address or a round-robin DNS setup.

That leaves the problem of the naked domain. Traditionally you'd point the naked domain to the Primary IP address and then do some httpd.conf magic to redirect the naked to the www (or vice versa). However this does not solve the problem of what happens if the underlying IP address changes.

Pointing the naked domain to a dedicated IP address which is not associated with where the site is hosted removes the problem of what would happen if you change IPs quickly.

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bradleyjoyce 5638 days ago
Interesting, thanks for the response!
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