My rough understanding and basic usage of DNS doesn’t cover much cross-hosting stuff and when I get to the point of thinking I have figured out what I need to put on each end for each record, my brain sort of turns in on itself. Part of this is because it seems both sides has their DNS stuff laid out and labelled a bit differently (or so it seems to me).
Here’s what I’d like to do:
I’ve signed up for an amazing domain on gen.xyz with the latest omg.lol promo: anniegreens.lol
I want to create corresponding subdomains (weblog, status, omg, etc) over there for each omg.lol property I use and point each one to their match so that each points like so:
omg.anniegreens.lol => anniegreens.omg.lol
weblog.anniegreens.lol => anniegreens.weblog.lol
status.anniegreens.lol => anniegreens.status.lol
I get hung up, like I said, on which record goes on each end with what value/data. I’ve looked at knowledge base on gen.xyz and its all pretty basic and what I already understand but hasn’t helped me past that.
I still haven’t had a chance to sign up on gen.xyz myself, so I apologize for not having more familiarity with their DNS setup… but in general, I can say that for the three subdomains you mentioned, you’ll just want to add DNS “A” records that point to 5.78.24.5. And then over on the omg.lol side, you’ll just access the Switchboard and add all three as “external domains”, at which point you can then direct them to the individual services (profile, weblog, and statuslog respectively).
Hopefully this makes sense, but I know how this stuff can be super confusing even on the best of days. If you need a hand, just let me know! I’ve been meaning to go through the gen.xyz setup process and make a video about it anyway!
So if I’m understanding, I’ll create three A Records on gen.xyz DNS manager, where “Host Name” is omg/weblog/etc (I assume it auto-populates the other part) and the address field will be the IP you provided. And then the Switchboard part like you explain.
The only other thing I’m wondering is about SSL. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to do anything “official” with anniegreens.lol proper at this time. The free setup is pretty limited for number of pages and does not provide SSL. So is this an issue with the forwarding? is the browser going to throw some type of warning? to get SSL you have to go to at least the Starter level of Weebly and that is $10/mo which I know doesn’t sound like a lot, it as much as a streaming channel, but everything adds up. I might eventually need to choose one of the other levels to take advantage of some needs to resume my newsletter. Just wondering in the meantime about the SSL for https and the forwarding.
As for SSL, yeah, I think you have plenty of options. You could point the root anniegreens.lol domain at omg.lol as well, and then omg.lol will provision a cert for it (along with the other three items above — that’s all tied to when you add them as external domains to the switchboard). From there, you could opt to choose the option to forward it to a URL, and maybe point it at a pastebin entry that has a nice message about there not being anything to see on the base domain at this time. Or you could just point it at your profile page… or you could even use the “Disabled” option in the switchboard which will display a very simple/generic “This page is not available” message without throwing an SSL error. You could also point it to a free GitHub Pages site, or a free Netlify site (also powered by GitHub) if you wanted to play around with a simple one-pager site with those tools. All free! Totally up to you, and you have plenty of options.
I’m working on getting the domain landing itself to point to my bespoke HTML page in weblog, but I’m seeing that the setup used for the other subdomains, where I’m choosing one of the actual omg.lol services/pages in Switchboard won’t work for this the same way, and I think I have to choose “Redirect to a URL” which I’m not sure I want. The gen.xyz DNS management has a “one-click” redirect that I tried but it ends up actually being a redirect making the URL end up not being “anniegreens.lol”.
So, am I right? Is my only choice using this method the Switchboard redirect and then I won’t end up landing on anniegreens.lol?
To confirm, you want it so that when people visit anniegreens.lol they’ll land on the same page shown at https://anniegreens.weblog.lol? If that’s the case, then you can add anniegreens.lol as an external domain on the Switchboard and then set its destination to Weblog. But if you’re looking to do something else, let me know!
Almost, when someone visits anniegreens.lol they’ll get a static HTML (via weblog Files) page on anniegreens.weblog.lol, but what I’m finding (at least I think what I’m finding) is that using a redirect doesn’t have you end up on anniegreens.lol and I don’t know what other option to use as a specific page doesn’t seem to work the same as the ones using a subdomain. I hope I’m communicating this right. The issue is that a redirect is a redirect and you’re no longer on anniegreens.lol.
OK, I think I’m starting to get it (but I still haven’t had enough coffee, so no guarantees, heh). One important clarifying question — do you want anniegreens.lol to be the domain for all of your weblog content?
No, I still want the other three subdomains set up to mirror the corresponding omg.lol properties that started this post, including the main part of weblog.
Perhaps what I want isn’t possible, this is just to act as a static landing for anniegreens.lol, that will sort of just be a table of contents for the sub-domains, and it just happens to be that static html file created on weblog because I thought that would make things easy (ha!). But I’d like the ending solution to show the static page but the URL to remain anniegreens.lol. I probably should just create this on my domain, but again, I’d like to benefit the SSL cert from my omg.lol address.
OK, I fully get it now! Sorry for being so slow, lol. The fundamental challenge here is that you want to keep the weblog subdomain pointing to your weblog, which has its own landing page (for the weblog itself, of course), and you also want your root domain to point to a page on your weblog (but be served at the root domain, and not redirected to a separate page/URL). I totally get it.
I think I can work out a solution for you… stand by!
I have https://foobar.cool serving that special landing page without redirecting.
This is done with a brand new “URL mapping” feature that I just added, which allows you to arbitrarily map any URL that would reach your weblog to a specific page/post on your weblog without redirection. To make use of it, you’d just add the Domain map: source -> destination syntax to your weblog configuration.
Here’s the relevant section of foobar’s configuration which makes the setup above work:
When I was playing with the “one-click” URL redirect that gen.xyz provides in their DNS management area (that was all subsequently deleted/reverted before I started down this route), it automatically added three entries: blank, www, and *.
So, currently www.anniegreens.lol is working as expected, but blank on the Switchboard side (that is, just anniegreens.lol) is hung on the DNS error/directions, which I did before the www one that is already working.
Is it possible I need to add that wildcard (*) on both sides too?
Update with some pics of what is set on gen.xyz side and Switchboard still waiting:
Oh wait, judging by time, it might also be the usual TTL and DNS propegation issues, it has been like an hour/3? There shouldn’t be any manual approval on domains, regardless of top/sub level.
Not sure, I just know both blank and www were updated/added on both sides around roughly the same time and www worked almost immediately, there was very little wait. Then I added the wildcard entry to gen.xyz’s DNS management and blank worked shortly after, possibly coincidence.
