DNS Trouble: http traffic forwarding via CNAME doesnt appear to be working

[benjamin13]

This domain is being used for email only, so we want to redirect the http traffic to another domain.

We are using CNAME to redirect with two DNS entries, one for the root domain and one for www.

It’s been about 48 hours and it’s still not working. Everything else propagated w/in an hour or so.

We are using CNAME instead of A Record in order to forward to another domain as opposed to an IP Address.

This is because that other domain is already forwarded to a webpage url that we want to use as a landing.

Cloudflare says this is possible because CNAME flattening is employed. But again, it doesnt seem to be working.

What have we done wrong or is there a different way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for your support!

[sjr]

What is the domain?

Can you show a screenshot of your DNS records?

[benjamin13]

They’re like this:

CNAME, @, www.targetdomain.com, ttl auto
CNAME, www, www.targetdomain.com, ttl auto

There are no A Records

The other records are all for email.

[sdayman]

You forgot to answer the most important question:

@sjr

What is the domain?

[benjamin13]

Both domains are working. The email is working for the primary domain and the target domain for http forward works because I can use it from any computer to go to our landing page.

[cscharff]

@benjamin13

Both domains are working

A CNAME doesn’t redirect. So I guess everything is working as expected? If not you can share the actual hostnames in question so someone can try to help debug.

[sdayman]

If you just want to redirect the entire domain’s web requests elsewhere, you can use a Redirect Rule:

Just make sure you have Proxied DNS records for the hostnames you want to redirect.

[benjamin13]

@sdayman

If you just want to redirect the entire domain’s web requests elsewhere, you can use a Redirect Rule:

Just make sure you have Proxied DNS records for the hostnames you want to redirect.

Thanks. I havent studied this feature. Will this redirect only http traffic to @ and www while maintaining all of our DNS records for email?

[sdayman]

Your DNS records for mail shouldn’t be Proxied, so this rule will not affect that traffic.

[louise2]

Hi @benjamin13

As sdayman says, the all email related DNS records should be unproxied, as Cloudflare do not listen on port 25 (unless you use Spectrum). So make sure that the DNS records steering your email traffic is grey clouded, so that the traffic is not being routed through Cloudflare.

Then you can create a redirect rule where you redirect the traffic on the proxied DNS records.

[benjamin13]

Solved. Thanks Cloudflare and Sdayman.