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Basj
Asked: 2019-12-12 03:24:49 +0800 CST

A DNS record for both www and non-www websites

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For each website I have, I noticed that having just this A DNS record:

*.example.com   3600    A   0   192.1.2.3

will make http://example.com unavailable and having just this A DNS record:

example.com 3600    A   0   192.1.2.3

will make http://www.example.com unavailable.

Question: is it mandatory to have two A DNS records to support www and non-www

*.example.com   3600    A   0   192.1.2.3
example.com     3600    A   0   192.1.2.3

or is there a way to define both in one A DNS record?

PS: If it's mandatory to have two records, would you use:

www.example.com 3600    A   0   192.1.2.3
example.com     3600    A   0   192.1.2.3

or would you do it this way:

www.example.com 3600    CNAME example.com
example.com     3600    A   0   192.1.2.3

?

domain-name-system

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Short answer: Yes.

    Longer: I would suggest you adding exactly www.example.com and not *.example.com unless you don't want to ever use any sub-domain like john.example.com and jane.example.com, etc....

    Also, do not forget to configure your apache/nginx (which ever you use) to accept connections for both domain names.

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  2. To answer the second part of your question: For names I know will be served by the same machine for the foreseeable future I personally prefer defining one A record and then using CNAMEs as aliases for that record. That way I can change an address in one place and have everything move with it.

    A typical example: A load balancer/reverse proxy might get an A record with the name lbtest.example.com to point at its IP address.

    Each name served by that specific machine (example.com, www.example.com, foo.example.com) would get a CNAME pointing at lbtest.example.com.

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