Literal path to website

Community support
#1

I have had a VERY hard time getting a simple website up and unfortunately 000webhost support doesn’t read more than the 1st line of a submitted ticket.

We cannot and do not want to use the 000webhost name servers.
We DO want to simply point our website via an Alias to our website hosted at 000webhost.

What would be the literal path to our website?

The CPanel states:
Server Name:server22.000webhost.com
Home Root /home/a3138665

I created a Website Coming Soon index.html file
I placed it in the public_html folder

I have tried:
http://server22.000webhost.com/
http://server22.000webhost.com/home
http://server22.000webhost.com/home/a31386655

No matter what I try I cannot get the site to show up. Once we find out the literal path I can then create an CName and A Record to point our true www.company.com to the above path and it should work, but what is that path?

Thanks for ANY help here.

#2

There isn’t a path you can use, you can however just create an A record and point it to the IP address of the 000webhost server listed in your control panel.
I take it you created the 000webhost account stating your domain name is company.com, if so just create the A record. If you have selected a sub-domain, then also park your domain in the 000webhost control panel.

You also have to create an www. CNAME record pointing to company.com in your domain control panel.

#3

Thanks very much for the help. To follow up.

  1. We did indeed create our 000Webhost.com account with our already registered domain name.

  2. In the MS Office 365 (Our current email/web/DNS provider) I created an A record, with the IP of our 000webhost server provided in the CPanel.

Example: A -> www -> 31.170.160.86 -> 1 Hour

  1. Tested and worked as is.

I didn’t need to create a CName and I am not very savvy with DNS, so not sure if this will be a problem?

Thanks for the help!

#4

I found a problem that I believe MopedManiac was hinting at but I am not quite sure how to correct.

www.company.com works fine in a web browser.
company.com errors out and doesn’t go anywhere in a web browser.

Do I need to create a DNS record so that if someone uses a web browser and accidentally or on purpose types company.com it will know to go to www.company.com?

Is this an @ record?

Thanks for any assistance on this again.

#5

Your DNS should laid out like this…
You have an A record for company.com pointing to 000webhost IP
You have a CNAME record www. pointing to company.com

The chain of DNS events looks like this (happens in split second)
company.com ----> 000webhost
www.company.com ----> company.com ----> 000webhost

If your dont have a CNAME option, what options do you have?

#6

I see how that goes, and with your information I have created the correct CName. I was under the impression that you could only have one or the other pointing to the same place, but your excellent information makes perfect sense.

Creating first the A record and then Aliases to those A records afterwards.

Thanks again for the help! This has been a great DNS lesson for me and much appreciated!

#7

No problem, if you need any other help just ask. You may even drop me a private message if you prefer it.

#8

Looks like I still have a problem, and while a PM is ok i like to post here in case others have a similar problem.

Anyways, I thought I had this working but it was a cached copy. Let me post my DNS entries and see if you notice an error.
*I altered the actual domain name so as not to broadcast our website here.

A -> www -> 31.170.160.86 -> 1 Hour
CNAME -> company -> www.company.com -> 1 Hour

So when I do the www.company.com that is working great, no issues.
The company.com which we had hoped in a browser to go to www.company.com is still not working. I am not sure what I have done wrong.

Thanks again!

#9

company.com > A record > 31.170.168.86
www > CNAME > company.com

I think you got them the wrong way around, this is the correct way

#10

@ reres:

You cannot use DNS to force a redirect from example.com to www.example.com**

[SIZE=“1”][COLOR=“SandyBrown”]This is best done server-side using .htaccess, but that’s off-topic.[/COLOR][/SIZE]

#11

Thanks for the quick reply, but I seem to have found the problem.

I was testing this on IE 8, and it would always fail and go to Bing stating it couldn’t find company.com

I then used a fresh session of Firefox, typed company.com, and it works. I also went to a VM system and verified the problem exists there, FF is ok, IE is not.

Strange. Oh well, I guess we will have to live with it as is.

Appreciate you response and help.

#12

If you are using 000webhost for mail and ftp as well… your DNS would like this (just to prevent you from running into problems later…)

company.com > A record > 31.170.168.86
www > CNAME > company.com
ftp > CNAME > company.com
mail > CNAME > company.com

#13

If the DNS provider calls for FQDN (fully qualified domain name) entries as CNAME data, the CNAME data entry should be terminated with a period: company.com.

company.com > A record > 31.170.168.86
www > CNAME > company.com.
ftp > CNAME > company.com.
mail > CNAME > company.com.
#14

Thanks gents for the help. Still having the problem with just company.com but the www.company.com is going to the 000webhost.com website as we intended.

We currently use MS Office 365 for email which is just stellar, the Sharepoint not so stellar. Currently our DNS is pretty basic and as follows:

A	company	31.170.160.86	1 Hour
CNAME	www	  company.com	1 Hour

In the A record, I am not allowed to make company.com just company, so I suspect that is the problem, but what is weird about that is the WWW is pointing to company.com and that works. Bizarre.

So we are not in any critical stage anymore thanks to Mopedmaniacs (And others’) help! Just this little annoyance which seems to be more with the MS Office 365 DNS manager than anything else at this stage.

#15

@ reres:

If you were able to tell us the actual domain name, it would probably only take minutes to determine what the problem might be.

It’s your call.

#16

Just an update. I was able to reference another website of a friends and just mimicked their settings with mine.

Heres what I did:

Created an A Record
Host Name: @
Points To: 31.170.160.86

Created a CName record
Host name: WWW
Points to: company.com

This solved the WWW and the company.com issue.

So looks like I wasn’t aware (and am still not aware) of what the @ sign does in DNS?

#17

@ corresponds to the $ORIGIN record in DNS data where it represents the FQDN (fully qualified domain name).

Many domain registrars assume that the domains they ‘sell’ will only over be addressed using example.com and www.example.com** so they simply offer the ability to enter records @ and www respectively.

@ is never used in email data within DNS records.
There is an email component to the SOA (start of authority) record, but the email address @ is always replaced with a period.

You don’t need to use the dummy domain name company.com as IANA have specifically reserved the domain name [URL=“http://www.iana.org/domains/example/”]example.com for illustrative purposes.