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I purchased the domain blank.com through Namecheap. I already owned example.com and was hosting it through Network Solutions, so my plan was to do the following:

  1. Create a subdomain blank.example.com.
  2. Upload my website's files to blank.example.com.
  3. Create blank.com CNAME blank.example.com.

Steps 1 and 2 ran smoothly. Unfortunately, at Step 3, I got the 403 Forbidden error. I read online that I needed to add blank.com as an alias somehow, and that the problem is with HTTP rather than DNS. But how do I configure my server on Network Solutions to allow this CNAME action?

Noooo
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    Where exactly did you get the `403 Forbidden` error at step 3? – Tero Kilkanen Apr 20 '17 at 02:10
  • Can you show the configuration for the web server, and the logs that demonstrate the 403? – Tim Apr 20 '17 at 02:18
  • I got the 403 error when trying to access `http://blank.com/`. How do I get the configuration for the web server? – Noooo Apr 20 '17 at 02:18
  • A `CNAME` is jargon specific for DNS and you can not have CNAME records [at the apex of a domain](https://serverfault.com/q/613829/37681) – HBruijn Apr 20 '17 at 06:37

1 Answers1

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This is because CNAME records aren't URL redirections: they are working on DNS level, just creating an alias for another hostname. You also shouldn't use CNAME on your domain root as it may cause problems, if you need to use it for email. RFC 1034, 3.6.2:

A CNAME RR identifies its owner name as an alias, and specifies the corresponding canonical name in the RDATA section of the RR. If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other data should be present; this ensures that the data for a canonical name and its aliases cannot be different. This rule also insures that a cached CNAME can be used without checking with an authoritative server for other RR types.

Namecheap already has URL Redirection option, so you don't need to make any changes to your Network Solutions hosting. In the same way you could set up email forwarding from the additional domain to your existing one.

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Esa Jokinen
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