The CNAME record is also known as canonical name record. It is used for specifying that a domain name is an alias for another domain, the “canonical” domain. A typical example is the www subdomain which is often set as an alias to the root domain name
The CNAME Record is used only for subdomains. You can’t add any other records for given hostname, if this hostname has a CNAME Record. Also, it’s not possible to create CNAME record if there are any other records for this hostname.
How to create a DNS CNAME record?
Go to your Control Panel and click on Add new record. Type, as follow:
Type: CNAME
TTL: 1 Hour
Host: example
Points to: example2.hostname.com
CNAME record VS A record
The A records and the CNAME records are the two most commonly used records and sometimes you can easily get confused when to use A and when CNAME. With A record, the hostname is resolved to the corresponding IP address. On the other hand, CNAME records map your hostname to another hostname.
How to start managing CNAME records for your domain name?
- Open free trial account from here — free forever
- Verify your e-mail address
- Log into your control panel
- Create new Master DNS from the [add new] button — read more here
- Add the CNAME record(s) you need as it is described in this article
Support of CNAME records
ClouDNS provides full support for CNAME records for all our DNS services, including the listed below. Just write to our technical support, if you need any assistance with your CNAME records configuration. Our Technical Support team is online for you 24/7 via live chat and tickets.
FAQ
Question: What is the main purpose of the CNAME record?
Answer: In a nutshell, it redirects from your domain’s subdomains to other domains/subdomains.
Question: Why there can’t be a CNAME record for the root domain?
Answer: According to RFC 1912 2.4, a CNAME record is not allowed to coexist with any other data. And since there are other data for the root domain (e.g. SOA records, NS records, etc.), a CNAME record cannot be added for the root. For such cases, we recommend using the ALIAS record, which is a replacement of CNAME and it can coexist with other data (it can be created for root domain).
Question: Can I use more than one CNAME record for the same host?
Answer: No, because of the same reason we stated above, there can be only one CNAME record the same host.
Originally published at https://www.cloudns.net.
