How to forwarding bare domain to www.domain for google app hosted site

Question

I am in the process of porting some sites from my own server to Google (GHS). I've always used ZoneEdit to manage my DNS needs and in the past - wrongly or rightly - configured it so that:

domain.com and www.domain.com pointed to: <my known ip address>

With the www sub-domain all is fine and it (www.domain.com) resolves to ghs.google.com (via a CNAME entry) and the site is displayed.

However, if I try and reach the bare domain (domain.com) FF states it is unable to establish a connection. I assume this is because my DNS configuration has no A ip-address entry for it anymore.

I was considering forwarding any URL from domain.com to www.domain.com, although possible ZoneEdit is not recommending it I think because I telling it to only forward requests for http://domain.com and leave http://www.domain.com as it is (i.e CNAME configured).

Am I handling this the best way?

Please advise.

Solution 1

According to the article on URL forwarding in the Google Apps Help, forwarding your naked domain to the www domain is the best way to handle it.

And then you leave the CNAME record for the www domain to point to ghs.google.com, as you already have done.

Solution 2

You could also add your vote to Issue 777: Officially Support Naked Domains for GAE Apps to ask Google to support naked domains. That way you would also be able to use http://domain.com as a valid address for your App Engine application.

Solution 3

Now there is a direct way within Google Apps to do this.

It is located in Gooogle Apps > Domain Settings > Domain Names

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourwebsite.com/DomainSettingsDomains

Requisite : Your 'A' Records should point to the google server.

How it works?

1. User types yourwebsite.com
2. DNS sends it to the server whose IP is mentioned in the A Record
3. That server (Googles host server), takes the domain name and redirects to www.yourwebsite.com (or the sub-domain / link you specify)
4. User reaches www.yourwebsite.com

From there you know ...

Solution 4

You can also look at the post 'Naked' domains on App Engine by Nick Johnson

Solution 5

The naked to www redirection in Google Apps is broken, or at least it is for some of my apps. If Google Apps uses eNom, the redirection works properly, but if it uses GoDaddy, it will not carry forward the path (e.g. domain.com/this/is/path will redirect to www.domain.com). The fix is to use 3rd party DNS.

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