Support #3062
closedhumanshell.net custom domain mapping
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Description
Boone,
Since the beginning of the year I've been reorganizing my blogs and their posts so I can start writing more frequently about a number of different topics. I'm moving all personal and general tech related articles to my new personal d5c.me Ghost blog. I'd like to move all WP related articles off of my wordpress.com blog and centralize them on my Commons blog; which is the blog that's linked to the Digital Fellows Tutorials group where I try to help some of the grad students that Matt works with. I think by focusing my planned WP related writing on the Commons I can drive more traffic to our site as well as further help out the Digital Fellows members.
What I need now is to finalize the mapping of the domain I've always used on wordpress.com: humanshell.net over to the Digital Fellows blog: dft.commons.gc.cuny.edu. I've configured the domain mapping plugin in Network Admin and entered the appropriate IP in my registrars DNS settings but I think I'm missing a final step to finish the mapping. Do we need to send a request to CUNY IT to physically map the domain name in our hosts file to finish the process? Let me know what I/we need to do to finish this and I'll start whipping up some new posts and tutorials for our site.
Updated by Dominic Giglio over 10 years ago
Boone,
I've tried to setup a CNAME with my registrar but to no avail. I double checked the Domain Mapping settings in the Network Admin and it seems to indicate that you can configure it for IP address OR cnames. I obviously don't want change that setting now as it will most likely break all other mapped domains.
Here's what I'm thinking we should do:
1.) Would you please put in the request for the proper apache config so I can finish mapping my domain?
2.) We should investigate this plugin a little more to see if we should switch from an A record setup to a CNAME setup. If that will be relatively painless, we might want to do it if it means we don't have to contact IT every time someone wants to map a domain.
Thoughts?
Updated by Boone Gorges over 10 years ago
I double checked the Domain Mapping settings in the Network Admin and it seems to indicate that you can configure it for IP address OR cnames
I think (though I'm not totally positive) that the "either/or" bit is really about the documentation that is displayed to your users when setting up their own domains. Either you show them CNAME info, or you show them A record info, but not both. I don't see anything in the plugin code that would suggest that the plugin can't handle both at the same time.
Let's wait until IT comes through with the Apache mods, keeping your CNAME records intact. If it starts working, then we know that our server config requires manual adding of new domains, whether CNAME or A records are used. If it doesn't work, then I'll ask you to switch your A record over to our IP.
Updated by Dominic Giglio over 10 years ago
Matt, thanks for sending in that request.
Boone,
I changed my DNS back to an A-record after my last update. I'm more than happy to change it back to a CNAME now to test out this functionality. Namecheap makes it super simple, it'll only take me a second. Please remind me again what URL you'd like me to use. Is it just commons.gc.cuny.edu?
Updated by Matt Gold over 10 years ago
- Status changed from New to Reporter Feedback
Okay -- IT reports that the domain mapping is done. Please test and let me know if it is working as expected. thanks.
Updated by Boone Gorges over 10 years ago
- Status changed from Reporter Feedback to Assigned
- Assignee changed from Dominic Giglio to Matt Gold
- Target version changed from 1.5.19 to Not tracked
Matt, this one is not working. Something strange is happening - even before I do the mapping, the domain is resolving to the Commons blog. This makes me think that IT has configured the domain as an alias for the subdomain. This is incorrect: they should be set up to point to our webroot (/var/www/html/) and WordPress takes care of the necessary mapping. (I'm afraid I don't have more specific details because I'm not 100% sure how domains are mapped on the Commons server; I assume it's through the use of vhosts.)
Updated by Dominic Giglio over 10 years ago
It is working but it's also not working.
I've tried both A-record and CNAME at my registrar and surprisingly they both work. In the domain mapping settings I've unchecked the primary checkbox because I'd like visitors to know that it's the Digital Fellows Tutorials blog. So if the domain redirects I'm totally OK with that.
The first time I tried a CNAME I set it to commons.gc.cuny.edu. I just changed that to dft.commons.gc.cuny.edu to see what happens.
Updated by Dominic Giglio over 10 years ago
After a little more testing I'm curious if the IT dept made a small error. Here's what I did:
1.) set domain mapping to primary in our plugin config for humanshell.net
2.) changed my registrars DNS back to an A-record
3.) tried to load the home page for the DFT blog.
That gives me a forbidden error. Then I tried to load a single post and I get this error:
DNS lookup failure for: dft.commons.gc.cuny.edu2011
It looks like the server settings (for my vhost on the commons server?) is missing an ending forward slash ("/")?
Updated by Matt Gold over 10 years ago
- Status changed from Assigned to Reporter Feedback
Hi Dom -- IT made a change in its configuration just now. Can you please retest? Thank you.
Updated by Dominic Giglio over 10 years ago
- Status changed from Reporter Feedback to Resolved
I've checked the home page and some individual posts in both Chrome and Safari and everything looks good. I'm going to leave all the settings and configuration the way they are for now since it's all working. I'm also marking this as resolved. Thank you both for jumping in to help.
Boone,
Let me know if you want to use this blog to test domain mapping in the future. We can adjust settings and DNS config to test exactly how we want domain mapping to work generally across the Commons.