I’ve set up my domain (remembermore.app) to point to Netlify’s DNS servers. I have different apps hosted on Netlify running on different subdomains.
I also have a site at the www subdomain, but this is not hosted by Netlify (it’s on Google Sites).
All this is set up and working nicely. However, I’d like to redirect the “bare” (apex) domain to www. None of the instructions I’ve found so far help.
I don’t have www set up as a site in Netlify, so there are no Domain management settings for me to set
There are no options for redirecting apex domains on the account-level DNS settings
According to this blog, this might “just work” if I set an A record on the apex domain?
Only problem with that - the instructions say “We publish the static IP address of our main load balancer so you can associate it with your A record”. Great! But where is this static IP address published?
@alexwarren The load balancer is at 104.198.14.52, but I don’t think this is going to help you.
Netlify does not want you to use Netlify DNS for sites that are hosted elsewhere, so there’s that.
If the arrangement you’re try to achieve is legit by Netlify, then you could set up an index.html page in your Netlify space and add a meta redirect to your other-hosted site. You might also be able to set up a redirect command (in a _redirect file) that handles this.
However, this would be a very odd way of doing things. There’s got to be a more straightforward way of doing it that does not involve running things through Netlify that all eventually go elsewhere, like using your domain registrar’s DNS to point visitors to the correct server in the first place.
Hi, @alexwarren, you can do this with Netlify DNS by making an ALIAS record for the apex domain.
In other words, don’t point the apex domain to Netlify if you want it to show the same site that www shows. Point the apex domain to the same server the www subdomain is pointing to.
To do this, enter the “@” as the name (@ means “this apex domain”) and for the value use the same domain name that you used for the www subdomain. The ALIAS record type is an unofficial DNS record type which allows a CNAME to be used for the apex.
The web server at that CNAME will also need to be configured to show the right site when this domain name is used just like it does for the www subdomain.
If there are other questions about this, please let us know.
Thanks Luke, this bit is the problem when using Google Sites though, as there’s no way of configuring this. That’s why I need something else to return a response for the apex domain to redirect to www.