Redirect all traffic from http://example.com to http://www.example.com at the DNS level

Question

I'm using Amazon Web Services to host my site and since I am going to use the ELB service I will need to redirect all my traffic from http://example.com to http://www.example.com.

Is this possible through the DNS?

I am using Route 53 as my DNS. Any hints would be appreciated.

Given the protocol identifiers in your URLs, you can already see that it is impossible. You want two completely unrelated protocols in ways they have not been designed for ;) — 0xC0000022L, Mar 02 '11 at 19:33

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '11 at 18:58

12

You cannot do redirects in DNS.

Instead, you need an HTTP server that sends HTTP 301 redirects in response to requests for mysite.com.
Most registrars offer redirect servers; consult yours.

answered Mar 02 '11 at 18:58

SLaks

483
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14

Indeed my registrar offers a free redirect service. Thank you! – Alex Mar 02 '11 at 19:42

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 13 '12 at 17:16

Even quicker than organicveggie that doesn't require mod_rewrite (but what fun is it running Apache without mod_rewrite?) is that you can just redirect directly from your site config. This requires no webroot to be created at all. This should go within your <VirtualHost *:80> section for this site:

ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias *.mydomain.* myotherdomain.* *.myotherdomain.* yetanotherdomain.*
Redirect 301 / http://mymaindomain.com/

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 22:08

To supplement SLaks response, a common way to handle this is to use mod_rewrite in Apache and send a 301 redirect. In other words, let ELB send the traffic to an Apache server running on your EC2 instance. Then have Apache send a redirect if the hostname does not include www.

Here's a sample snippet:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http:/www.example.com/$1 [R,L]

Hope that helps.

Redirect all traffic from http://example.com to http://www.example.com at the DNS level

3 Answers3