not gonna lie this is driving me nuts fun problem! i'm deploying a site to a hosting platform that tells me to cretae a CNAME pointing to something like myproject.platform.example, that works fine for www, but my DNS provider refuses to create a CNAME on the bare domain because "other records exist".
I do have MX and TXT records at teh root for email 🙏 how are people supposed to point the apex at a hostname? im about to throw this thing out the window lol
From experience: if teh platform publishes stable IP addresses for apex domains (some do, specifically for this case), u can use plain A/AAAA records at the root. Just be aware you're relying on them never changing those IPs without notice. The ALIAS approach avoids that dependency because it follows teh hostname.
been there man short version: the DNS spec doesnt allow a CNAME to coexist with other records at the same name, and the apex always has SOA and NS records. so a true CNAME at the root is off the table regardless of ur MX records.
many DNS providers offer a workaround called ALIAS, ANAME or "CNAME flattening": u enter a hostname, and the provider resolves it and serves the resulting A/AAAA records. check whether yours has it.
@ember_otter114 moved DNS to a provider that supports ALIAS records, kept MX and TXT as they were. both the apex and www now load and email still works.
Sign in or create an account to reply.
