How do I set up DNS for an apex domain no www pointing to a Heroku app

Question

I already added a custom domain to my Heroku app and it works with www domain com   I need to know how to set up the domain without www to resolve to the app  too   Here are my current DNS settings    TTL 86400     IN SOA ns1 first-ns de  postmaster robot first-ns de        2013041500     serial     14400          refresh     1800           retry     604800         expire     86400          minimum                           IN NS      robotns3 second-ns com                           IN NS      robotns2 second-ns de                           IN NS      ns1 first-ns de                            IN A       88 198 38 XXX localhost                IN A       127 0 0 1 mail                     IN A       88 198 38 XXX ftp                      IN CNAME   www imap                     IN CNAME   www loopback                 IN CNAME   localhost pop                      IN CNAME   www relay                    IN CNAME   www smtp                     IN CNAME   www www                      IN CNAME   appname herokuapp com                           IN MX 10   mail   What are the correct settings to use so that both example com and www example com would point correctly to my Heroku app

User · Answer

To point your apex root naked domain at a Heroku-hosted application  you ll need to use a DNS provider who supports CNAME-like records  often referred to as ALIAS or ANAME records   Currently Heroku recommends    ALIAS at DNSimple ANAME at DNS Made Easy ANAME at easyDNS ALIAS at PointDNS CNAME at CloudFlare   Whichever of those you choose  your record will look like the following   Record  ALIAS or ANAME  Name  empty or    Target  example com herokudns com   That s all you need     However  it s not good for SEO to have both the www version and non-www version resolve  One should point to the other as the canonical URL  How you decide to do that depends on if you re using HTTPS or not  And if you re not  you probably should be as Heroku now handles SSL certificates for you automatically and for free for all applications running on paid dynos   If you re not using HTTPS  you can just set up a 301 Redirect record with most DNS providers pointing name www to http   example com   If you are using HTTPS  you ll most likely need to handle the redirection at the application level  If you want to know why  check out these short and long explanations but basically since your DNS provider or other URL forwarding service doesn t have  and shouldn t have  your SSL certificate and private key  they can t respond to HTTPS requests for your domain   To handle the redirects at the application level  you ll need to    Add both your apex and www host names to the Heroku application  heroku domains add example com and heroku domains add www example com  Set up your SSL certificates Point your apex domain record at Heroku using an ALIAS or ANAME record as described above Add a CNAME record with name www pointing to www example com herokudns com  And then in your application  301 redirect any www requests to the non-www URL  here s an example of how to do it in Django  Also in your application  you should probably redirect any HTTP requests to HTTPS  for example  in Django set SECURE SSL REDIRECT to True    Check out this post from DNSimple for more

User · Answer

I am now using Google Apps  for Email  and Heroku as web server  I am using Google Apps 301 Permanent Redirect feature to redirect the naked domain to WWW your domain com  You can find the step-by-step instructions here https   stackoverflow com a 20115583 1440255

User · Answer

Note  root  base  apex domains are all the same thing  Using interchangeably for google-foo    Traditionally  to point your apex domain you d use an A record pointing to your server s IP  This solution doesn t scale and isn t viable for a cloud platform like Heroku  where multiple and frequently changing backends are responsible for responding to requests   For subdomains  like www example com  you can use CNAME records pointing to your-app-name herokuapp com  From there on  Heroku manages the dynamic A records behind your-app-name herokuapp com so that they re always up-to-date  Unfortunately  the DNS specification does not allow CNAME records on the zone apex  the base domain    For example  MX records would break as the CNAME would be followed to its target first    Back to root domains  the simple and generic solution is to not use them at all  As a fallback measure  some DNS providers offer to setup an HTTP redirect for you  In that case  set it up so that example com is an HTTP redirect to www example com   Some DNS providers have come forward with custom solutions that allow CNAME-like behavior on the zone apex  To my knowledge  we have DNSimple s ALIAS record and DNS Made Easy s ANAME record  both behave similarly   Using those  you could setup your records as  using zonefile notation  even tho you ll probably do this on their web user interface        IN ALIAS your-app-name herokuapp com  www IN CNAME your-app-name herokuapp com    Remember   here is a shorthand for the root domain  example com   Also mind you that the trailing dots are important  both in zonefiles  and some web user interfaces   See also    Doing DNS right with Heroku Avoiding Naked Domains and DNS A-records   Remarks    Amazon s Route 53 also has an ALIAS record type  but it s somewhat limited  in that it only works to point within AWS  At the moment I would not recommend using this for a Heroku setup  Some people confuse DNS providers with domain name registrars  as there s a bit of overlap with companies offering both  Mind you that to switch your DNS over to one of the aforementioned providers  you only need to update your nameserver records with your current domain registrar  You do not need to transfer your domain registration

User · Answer

You are not allowed to have a CNAME record for the domain  as the CNAME is an aliasing feature that covers all data types  regardless of whether the client looks for MX  NS or SOA records   CNAMEs also always refer to a new name  not an ip-address  so there are actually two errors in the single line                           IN CNAME   88 198 38 XXX   Changing that CNAME to an A record should make it work  provided the ip-address you use is the correct one for your Heroku app    The only correct way in DNS to make a simple domain com name work in the browser  is to point the domain to an IP-adress with an A record

[heroku] How do I set up DNS for an apex domain (no www) pointing to a Heroku app?

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