How should I configure my DNS records to direct all traffic from one domain to another? - redirect

I have a doman, mydomain.com as well as mydomain.biz and would like the the latter to be a synonym for the former: whenever a user enters www.mydomain.biz they are taken to www.mydomain.com.
I have everything working for mydomain.com and thought, from my limited understanding that a CNAME record would accomplish what I'm trying to do, so I have
NS mydomain.biz. = (nameservers that work fine)
SOA mydomain.biz. = (values that work fine)
CNAME *.mydomain.biz. = mydomain.com.
and when I host mydomain.biz I get
www.mydomain.biz is an alias for mydomain.com.
followed by other information that exactly matches what I get with host mydomain.com. Yet, any attempt to navigate to www.mydomain.biz fails.
I'm also perplexed by what I see when I look at propagation of my NS records. Checking for mydomain.biz gives the nameservers specified above, but checking for for www.mydomain.biz gives the values specified (elsewhere) for mydomain.com
Am I not going about this the right way? How should I configure my DNS records to direct all traffic from one domain to another.

DNS cannot redirect a request. Lets take an example on what CNAME does to clarify:
CNAME: domainA ==> domainB
What that would do is send requests for domainA to the same IP as domainB. However the URL will remain domainA (so it's not a redirect, a redirect would actually change the URL).
If you are okay with having the site load under two different domains, then a CNAME record will do the job. However you need to make sure that your server is configured to handle requests from both domainA and domainB. The way you do that is very different depending on your server environment. For example if you are using apache, your virtualhosts determine what domains are handled (you could set it up so any domain is accepted). If you are on shared hosting however, you will likely be restricted to the domain you signed up with. Adding more depends on your web host so you'd have to take it up with them.
If on the other hand you want the visitor to be redirected to domainB, you'd have to point domainA to a server that would return an HTTP redirect. It could be the same server, you just need to configure it to return the HTTP redirect if the request is for domainA.

Related

Redirect Multiple Domains to Single Domain Using Single Domain's 'A' Records

I have multiple domains; example.com, myexample.com, exampleweb.com, etc. My DNS for example.com has over 20 subdomains (e.g. www.example.com, client1.example.com, client2.example.com, etc). These various sub-domains' 'A' records actually point to different IP addresses where different web servers are running, so www.example.com may go to one IP address while client1.example.com points to another IP address and client2.example.com points to a third IP address.
I was hoping I could build all the 'A' records in example.com (they are now) so that any time a browser calls for www.myexample.com it is redirected to www.example.com where the 'A' record points to the proper ftp server's IP address. Also, if the browser calls for client1.myexample.com it is redirected to client1.example.com where the 'A' record points to another web server.
It appears that I cannot do this in DNS. It also appears the only solution is to manually create redundant 'A' records in all of our synonym domains then create redirect records (in web.config) on each web server where we redirect the synonym domains to example.com.
We have a wildcard SSL certificate for example.com and don't want to purchase and maintain extra wildcard SSL certificates for all of our synonym domains.
Am I understanding this correctly? We work with IIS web servers.
I tried altering the CNAME record. I tried a single redirect via the web.config (partially works but have to do this for all web servers). Modified DNS for one of the synonym domains to point to the web server with the redirect action. These are only partial solutions. It looks like I have to combine all actions, which is a very complicated solution.

How to redirect non-existent website from one domain to an existing website on another domain using https and http?

I purchased a domain name (we'll call it "exampledomain.com"). There is no website tied to the domain and there are no plans to do so.
I want to redirect all URL variants of this domain to an existing website I also own: (we'll call it "destinationdomain.com")
If a user types any of the following, I want to redirect them to https://www.destinationdomain.com/
https://exampledomain.com/
https://www.exampledomain.com/
http://exampledomain.com/
http://www.exampledomain.com/
How would I set this up?
What I believe I need to do is:
Add exampledomain.com as a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) to an existing SANs supported SSL I own for an existing website.
Point IPs of exampledomain.com to the IP used by destinationdomain.com
Add code to destinationdomain.com so that when it receives requests from the above exampledomain.com variants, it performs a 301 redirect to https://www.destimationdomain.com
POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE?
Set up domain forwarding from exampledomain.com to https://www.destinationdomain.com/
Add exampledomain to destinationdomain.com's Subject Alternative Names (SANs)?
Is this accurate, or can I achieve this without step 3?
Thank you in advance.
Point IPs of exampledomain.com to the IP used by destinationdomain.com
You need to point it somewhere. It doesn't have to be the same server as you are using for your other site. (e.g. I might do this all in AWS and use an S3 bucket to do the redirect).
Add code to destinationdomain.com so that when it receives requests from the above exampledomain.com variants, it performs a 301 redirect to https://www.destimationdomain.com
The server that you point the new domain to does need to issue a 301 redirect.
This doesn't need to be anything to do with the old domain though. Even if they are hosted on the same server, you can use Virtual Name Hosting to use separate server configurations.
Add exampledomain.com as a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) to an existing SANs supported SSL I own for an existing website.
You will need the domain in the certificate for whatever server is hosting it. If you're using the same server then setting it up as a SAN makes sense.

SSL DSN hidden redirect from sub1.domain1.com to sub2.domain2.com

I need to do a setup, where users would be able to access URL sub1.domain1.com that would be mapped by DSN to sub2.domain2.com, so all further communication would appear to be with sub1.domain1.com, however in reality it would just be "redirected" to sub2.domain2.com. HTTPS is required too, so simple CNAME wouldn't do it.
So far I have found out about SAN certificate. With that certificate it seems like it would be possible to accomplish this. However it has one drawback for me - with every new domain that is added to this certificate, all other domain owners must confirm this. And this is not very suitable for my case, because I expect new domains to be added on regular basis.
All domains would point to one certain subdomain (for example: sub1.domain1.com -> sub2.domain2.com,sub3.domain3.com ->sub2.domain2.com, sub4.domain4.com->sub2.domain2.com ..), so the certificate doesn't have to allow redirection between all domains mutually, but it would be enough to allow redirection from all domains to one certain domain (sub2.domain2.com)
Are there more suitable alternatives to accomplish this?
If, when user types https://sub4.domain4.com in their browser's address bar, you don't want (when the page is displayed) address in the bar to change to https://sub2.domain2.com then technically there is no HTTP redirection involved. You just have one website/webapp which is reachable via multiple hostnames (which is nothing unusual).
You need
CNAMEs to be in place
If you can't get (or it is complicated to maintain - which is expected, especially if you do not own the domains) one SSL/TLS cert with all hostnames, then you can always configure your webserver with multiple virtual hosts, each with their own certificate, and keep adding virtual hosts as needed. All virtual hosts can be configured to serve the same content (or just reverse proxy requests to the same one webapp running behind the proxy). Technical implementation depends on the platform used, but is typically not complicated.

Can I use Cloudflare to 301 redirect domains without A records?

I am using CloudFlare to manage my websites DNS. I want to use Page Rules to setup redirects for a number of URLs to go to another website URL.
Currently my hosting account, I have set them all up as addon domains and then setup redirects in CPanel.
I am moving across my sites to my own cloud server without a CPanel - I am using VestaCP. I don't want to clutter up the website records by adding each and every site I want to redirect to the host (there is a dozen of them) - I want Cloudflare to manage it all.
Is it possible to do this? Like use Cloudflare page rules and remove the A record pointing to the host server IP?
In order for you to use Page Rule to redirect to another site, there are 2 conditions:
Valid A record or CNAME record
That record is orange-clouded
The A record can point to any public IP address, for example 8.8.8.8, it doesn't matter because the visitor will be redirected away anyway. However it can't be IP address that belongs to Cloudflare (e.g. 1.1.1.1).
Similarly to CNAME record, can be pointed to any domain/subdomain (e.g google.com).
Cloudflare has a KB article that explains how you can configure the Page Rule to do the 301 redirection.

domain redirect to another domain with dns

My domain with hosting plan: testing.com
Other domains, but without hosting plan: test.com and test2.com
All of them buyed on same company, so NS records same.
Maybe DNS type A would help in this situation ?
In short, if someone try to use test.com or test2.com all users would be redirected to testing.com
I assume you talking about web-hosting. If your hosting plan is name-based virtualhosting (and that is what you probably have), The answer is: DNS is not enough.
You have two options:
Add multiple domain names to your hosting (most hostings will allow this either for free up to N domains, or for some additional fee or as part of more expensive plan).
Use URL forwarding (aka URL redirection) service, like this one (there are plenty other providers as well).
With both methods, you need appropriate DNS records in your domains, it can probably be handled by either - hosting for option 1, or URL forwarding provider for option 2. Basically you will need A records pointing either to your hosting, or URL forwarding webserver.