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ollie123ollie123 

Setting up http://domain.com

It's convention that we set up http://domain.com as well as http://www.domain.com/

 

However if there is an MX record on the domain, you cannot add a CNAME alias to "domain.com" which means http://domain.com will not work.

 

It looks to me that Salesforce needs to provide full IP addresses for each Salesforce Sites web site, instead of this kludgy solution with CNAME records.

 

 

Best Answer chosen by Admin (Salesforce Developers) 
BulentBulent
You need to update the "Custom Web Address" field of your site with the custom domain name that you created the cname for.

All Answers

BulentBulent

you need to redirect your domain.com to www.domain.com where you can cname www to your domain.force.com

you salesforce site is out of the box integrated with CDN (with more than 50,000 servers around the world), and your org might migrate between instances, for these reasons we can not provide a single IP address for your site. 
ollie123ollie123

"you need to redirect your domain.com to www.domain.com"

 

How? Normally this would be done using an A record to specify the IP address, but that's won't work as no allocated IP, and I can't use a CNAME.

 

Or are you suggesting I  set up a web-server on another platform, just to redirect HTTP requests to that hostname? If so that's a pretty ugly solution.
BulentBulent

Depends on your domain name provider. For example, Godaddy.com allows you permenantly or temporarly forward your domain names: http://help.godaddy.com/article/422?prog_id=GoDaddy

 

 
ollie123ollie123

Yes, I understand that many domain registrars provide this service, but it's being done at the HTTP level, not the DNS level. It means all traffic to the shorter-form hostname is going via a web server at my registrar. for highly-trafficked sites, this is pretty undesirable.

 

Please be aware also that Google Webmaster Tools can only be fully configured in terms of whether Google's search engine shows the http://domain.com/ or http://www.domain.com/ format if BOTH have been verified by Google's systems, and that is only possible if the forwarding is in place.

 

So the result is that Salesforce Sites is pretty much incompatible with any domain registrar that does not provide web-forwarding, as Salesforce Sites requires that a separate web server be running somewhere to redirect HTTP requests.

 

It seems a little ironic that the "no software" company requires that we all run a separate web server separate to our Sites installation, just to be able to fully configure the hostnames! :-)

 

I appreciate there are complexities with the CDN caching, but the current configuration puts some quite stringent requirements on our registrars, and HTTP forwarding requests means two HTTP requests for each page requested. Luckily my registrar does support forwarding, but it looks like a messy solution to me - it should really be done in the DNS. 
infoweldernickinfoweldernick

When I change my CNAME for WWW from @ to mydomain.force.com, users are directed to the SFDC login page at http://na6.salesforce.com when they go to www.mydomain.com. 

 

I can browse directly to mydomain.force.com with no problem.

 

I'd like to avoid forwarding my entire domain as I have other CNAMEs and MX records that point other places.

 

Am I missing something?

 

Thanks in advance for your response.

 

 
BulentBulent
You need to update the "Custom Web Address" field of your site with the custom domain name that you created the cname for.
This was selected as the best answer
ColincloColinclo

I need to get this fixed pretty quick. Apart from anything else, I'd like to start using Linkforce, and www.domain is no use as a shortened url...

 

I'm using GoDaddy and also Google Apps. I can add a new CNAME record, and set my Gorce.com site accordingly, but GoDaddy needs to know which host we're pointing to Force.com. The only suggestion I could find on the web is "www". Tried that, and obviously http://domain is still at GoDaddy.

 

     A) is there another host that will work?

or B) Should we forward http://domain to www.domain with masking, and then change the CNAME on www?

 

or C) Is there a better way to do it with another domain provider?

 

Bearing in mind that Google Apps needs to function too, I'd be grateful for a definitive answer
ColincloColinclo

I guess we're going with B) then