What DNS entries do I need to make in order for our domain registered with Winhost to point to the domain in Cloudflare.
Until we get our website developed we want our Texas organization’s domain name to point to our national organization’s website whose DNS is with Cloudflare.
Do you want to create a redirect (domain in the adressbar changes to your national organization) or just point the domain to the same server (your domain in the addressbar)?
For the first, create a redirect with your domain registrar.
For the second option, you need to ask someone from your national organization for instructions, because they will need to make changes on their end.
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Thank you for the reply. I just want it so that (for now) entering the domain name of our Texas address displays our national website address (which happens to be the same domain name except without texas in the name). I suppose that would be called redirect. So what type of entry to make it redirect?
Am I correct in my understanding that your domain’s DNS is not using Cloudflare, only your national organization’s domain?
If you are not using Cloudflare for your domain, creating a redirect is something you do at your registrar.
If you are using Cloudflare for your domain, follow Redirect Rules (beta) Cheat Sheet
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Your national org might also be able to support an SSL for SaaS setup to front the domain with your hostname (maybe): Cloudflare for SaaS · Cloudflare for Platforms docs
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Correct. Not on Cloudflare. However, I did start to but decided it should not be necessary. We just moved registration from GoDaddy so I am not excited to change again… yet. After your last reply I posted a question to the new registrar and am waiting for a reply.
HA! Domain registrar told me that because the national organization’s domain was not registered with them I should use Cloudflare.
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That’s not how redirects work. You can create a redirect to google.com or whatever site you want, the target is completely irrelevant.
This only works if your registrar supports redirects though. If they don’t, you need to find another service (like Cloudflare) that offers redirects.
I haven’t seen any registrar redirects with HTTPS support. That alone makes using Cloudflare for redirects preferable.
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Winhost seems to simply offer redirects via their webserver config. As long as you want to pay for a certificate…
But they actually recommend people use Cloudflare for redirects in their docs, so I won’t blame them I guess.
https://support.winhost.com/kb/a1613/how-to-redirect-non-www-to-www.aspx
https://support.winhost.com/kb/a1523/force-https-with-url-rewrite.aspx
Ok, at least a little blaming:
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Great stuff Laudian! Thanks. Now, because I seldom have to do this kind of stuff, I need to know exactly what my next steps should be to finally accomplish the redirect. I looked at the Cloudflare Docs pages and found “Redirect one domain to another” that has 3 steps listed. However, the terminology confuses me. I have signed on to Cloudflare and the nameservers are now Cloudflare. What do I do next? Is there a place in Cloudflare to make the edits suggested below?
"Make sure that your alias domain has a proxied [DNS A or CNAME record] (developers.cloudflaredotcom/dns/manage-dns-records/how-to/create-dns-records/) that properly resolves DNS queries. You may also want to include a record for the www subdomain.
| Type | Name | IPv4 address | Proxy status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | @ |
IPv4 address |
Proxied |
| A | www |
IPv4 address |
Proxied |
Create an AAAA record with the value 100:: and proxy status proxied.
Then go to Rules → Redirect Rules and create a rule like this where you replace YOURDOMAIN.COM with your Texas domain, and ORGDOMAIN.COM with the domain of the national organization.
Edit: Actually, you can check “all incoming requests” instead of using a custom expression.
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Laudian, you are the best help! But here is just how stupid I am on this. When I go to create the AAA record which field gets the 100: : and does it matter what I enter for the “required” Name? What IP address?
Type | Name (required) Use @ for root | IPv6 address (required) | Proxy status - Proxied | TTL | Auto
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Oops. The name should be @
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Thanks. And which field do I enter 100: : into?
Is that 100: : supposed to be the IPv6?
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I am sorry to be so stupid. I hope I have not worn you out.
You can communicate with a lot of different people, both from different countries and continents here on the Cloudflare Community (and likewise, on many other communities).
For many European users, it’s around 01:46 (e.g. AM / night time) right now, so I would initially just believe it to be a timezone barrier.
Yes.
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I finally got the redirect done! I could not have done it without your assistance and I want you to know that I really REALLY appreciate your time and expertise.
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Glad you got it.
You got me, right down to the exact time zone 