A and CNAME Records

  • I have a question about how to use the “Server CNAME domain” field to make sure I understand how it works.

    I’m going to move all my sites to a new hosting provider and I want the move to go smoothly. Right now I’m using an IP address configuration for WP MU Domain Mapping. If I leave it as is, I’ll have to edit the DNS for every client site when I switch the IP of the site. If I understand correctly, I can use the Server CNAME domain field to avoid this; am I right?

    Let’s say I have my WPMU install at mydomain.com. I have an A record set up for dns.mydomain.com and it points to the same IP address as my WPMU installation. Can I add dns.mydomain.com to the Server CNAME domain field and then set up records at GoDaddy (and other registrars) to point a client’s domain (clientdomain.com and https://www.clientdomain.com) to dns.mydomain.com with CNAME records? Is there any reason to use dns.mydomain.com in this example or can I just use mydomain.com?

    Thanks in advance for your help.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter asocalguy

    (@asocalguy)

    As a follow up to this, I found that GoDaddy doesn’t let you point the root domain (clientdomain.com in this example) at a cname. But an A record requires an IP address. is there any way around this so I can move the sites without having to run through every client’s DNS setting after I pull the trigger on moving the WPMU network?

    Plugin Author Ron Rennick

    (@wpmuguru)

    The CNAME or IP address in the settings is only for display in the user domain mapping tool. It has no effect on the functioning of the plugin.

    Thread Starter asocalguy

    (@asocalguy)

    I get that but in the end I think my question is more conceptual regarding DNS. I get that the plugin can accept either an IP address or a CNAME but it seems like a CNAME won’t work since not all domain registrars will allow you to map a domain to a cname. In fact, I’ve ready that doing so is against how DNS is supposed to work.

    So, in the end, I’m trying to figure out if there’s some way I set all the domains on my network to point to a CNAME and then edit the cname once in my DNS rather than having to touch a couple hundred sites on my network.

    Does that make sense?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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