CUNY Academic Commons

In order to map the domain, I need to know (a) the domain (in this case, carouselsofnyc.com) and also (b) the Commons site to which it should be mapped (either the numeric ID or the subdomain)

Shoot, that makes sense about b), sorry. Here is the URL:

https://carouselsnyc.commons.gc.cuny.edu

Thanks, Colin.

It doesn't look like DNS is set up correctly:

$ dig carouselsofnyc.com

; <<>> DiG 9.20.5 <<>> carouselsofnyc.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41713
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;carouselsofnyc.com.        IN    A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
carouselsofnyc.com.    1799    IN    A    192.64.119.94

;; Query time: 316 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Fri Mar 14 17:56:53 CDT 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 63

The owner needs to set up an appropriate CNAME or A record as per https://help.commons.gc.cuny.edu/domain-mapping-commons/

That is very strange. I wonder if the user has changed something in the past day or so trying to get it to work. I am pretty positive before that it was all pointing correctly (and I don't think Reclaim would have issued a cert as they did if it wasn't). I'll reach out to the user.

Actually, I think that www.carouselsofnyc.com is mapped correctly, and carouselsofnyc.com is not. Is it possible to map to the www for now? And then I can see what is going on with the root. I actually thought they had it as the reverse, and forwarding to the www, but maybe not.

Thanks, Colin. I've mapped www.carouselsofnyc.com in WordPress. It resolves properly to the Commons, but the cert looks broken. Could you follow up with Reclaim?

Hi Boone, Reclaim should have both of these certs ready now, if you can make sure both are cleared on your end. I also had the user remove their forwarding rules which I think were causing issues.

carouselsofnyc.com
www.carouselsofnyc.com

Hm, I'm not sure what's happening. Is there a reason why both carouselsofnyc.com and www.carouselsofnyc.com both have to be resolveable? Can we reinstate domain forwarding for www at the registrar so that it redirects to the non-www version? Then we only have to have a single mapping at the Commons.

Hi Boone, I can ask the user about reinstating domain forwarding for www, but I wonder about our general steps on this moving forward. This user is pretty tech savvy and willing to alter registrar settings, but in my experience the steps for forwarding vary a lot between registrars and are more difficult with less technical users.

That's why I'd prefer to keep steps for users as clean and easy to explain as possible: "Add these two CNAME records, delete any other A or CNAME records, delete forwarding if it's there, and that's it." But if it's causing issues on our end, I can add www forwarding to the sequence, and we'll figure it out for new users based on their registrar.

Ray, do you know whether perhaps I've set up the domain mapping improperly in WordPress?

If we can't figure it out, maybe the next step is to ask Reclaim what the proper config should be, with domains pointing toward the same WPMS subsite.

Ray, thanks so much for the clarification on www/non-www.

I'm also seeing the certificate error. Firefox gives more details:

Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for www.carouselsofnyc.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: acert.hunter.cuny.edu, cetls.bmcc.cuny.edu, clacls.gc.cuny.edu, crc15.org, district15parproject.org, globalization.gc.cuny.edu, hilarieashton.com, johnbrenkman.com, literarybronx.com, michael-greer.com, newsliteracymatters.com, pcp.gc.cuny.edu, publicslab.gc.cuny.edu, slublog.org, socialpaper.gc.cuny.edu, sruthi.org, taliaschaffer.com, wolex.com

So it does seem like it might be a problem with the way Reclaim has issued the cert. I've just sent their team a message about it.

Reclaim has fixed their config issues and the site is now resolving. Can others confirm?

So I think the two key takeaways here are:

1. As suggested by Colin, it continues to be OK for users to use CNAMEs for both www. and the bare domain when setting up DNS
2. We only need a single mapping for the domain in WP

Looking good to me now, thanks! I'll loop in the user to make sure, then we can circle back and codify our steps for handling new mapped domain requests.

Just to correct the loop, in my previous email I made an error. Instead of:

I've reconfigured the carouselsofnyc.com domain in Mercator to use the bare domain instead of the www one and it appears to be resolving now.

I meant to write:

I've reconfigured the carouselsofnyc.com domain in Mercator to use the trailing www. domain instead of the bare one and it appears to be resolving now.