Pointing a root-level domain at a Nabble forum

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Pointing a root-level domain at a Nabble forum

Marc Martin
This post was updated on .
Hi all,

I've assigned domain names to my Nabble forums, and when I set these up, I assigned
root-level domain names to them (e.g. "domain.com", NOT "forum.domain.com").
This worked fine until I tried changing registrars.

As others have pointed out here in the past, some registrars / web hosts do not allow
you to create CNAME records for root-level domains.  They insist that you use a
subdomain instead (e.g. "forum.domain.com").  However, since I was already using
a root-level domain at the previous registrar, I did not want to change the
name of existing groups.

Fortunately, I found that the Free DNS provided by NameCheap allows you to
assign a CNAME to a root-level domain (even for domains that aren't registered
with them), and that works with Nabble.  So that's my solution for today.  Also, my
original registrar, DynaDot, also allows you to assign CNAME records to root-level
domains, and that works with Nabble.

I'm just wondering if there are any other solutions to this -- does Nabble's
domain name feature really only work with CNAME records, or are there
any other clever DNS workarounds that people have found to work (e.g. URL
forwarding, A records, redirects, etc.).

Thanks,

Marc
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Re: Pointing a root-level domain at a Nabble forum

Hugo <Nabble>
The A-Record also works, but you have to provide the IP address of the server in this case. We recommend the CNAME record because it is independent of the IP address, so your domain name configuration uses our domain name configuration to find the server.
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Re: Pointing a root-level domain at a Nabble forum

Marc Martin
Thanks Hugo.  How often does Nabble change the IP addresses of their servers?  Have you ever changed them?  :-)  If the IP addresses are rarely/never changed, then yes, using an ANAME record would be a good workaround.
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Re: Pointing a root-level domain at a Nabble forum

Hugo <Nabble>
We rarely change IP addresses, but it did happen in the past. When a server breaks, we have to move the data into another one in order to keep the forums running. Chances are very small, but it may happen.