I’m going round in circles trying to find the answer to my problem so hopefully you can help me.
I registered a domain externally with Ionos but have changed all my name servers so that I am now managing all my DNS settings through Netlify where the majority of my apps are hosted. I have successfully configured everything so that my apex domain links up to my personal website (e.g. mydomain.com) and my various apps are all linked up to various subdomains (e.g. app1.mydomain.com).
What I wish to do is create a subdomain (linkedin.mydomain.com) that links to my linkedin profile. I have tried doing this by setting up a CNAME record in my DNS settings and setting the value to www.linkedin.com/myprofilepage, but this approach hasn’t worked. Most of the documentation I have come across talks about setting up a redirects file but I don’t see how this would be applicable in this situation.
Can you direct me to the correct solution here please?
The reason this doesn’t work is the record value isn’t valid for a CNAME.
This is your best bet. What a redirect would do is act as a shortlink of sorts for your LinkedIn profile *(although linkedin.yourdomain.com isn’t necessarily a lot shorter than linkedin.com/in/<yourname>.)
Displaying your LinkedIn profile on your own domain isn’t likely an option here.
Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure how I would add a redirect file in this instance as I’m just using Netlify to manage my DNS settings. Where would I be uploading a redirects file to? Do I need to add one to my website that’s linked to my apex domain?
Do you mean that you aren’t using Netlify for hosting? Because using Netlify for DNS without hosting content isn’t permitted.
You could set up a new Netlify site specifically for handling the redirects or assign the domain to an existing site. Comes down to which is better/easier for you to manage.