Using www or not

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  • MrBillFSE
    New Member
    • Jun 2018
    • 24
    • 5.3.x

    Using www or not

    Hello,

    I have set up my custom domain to point to my vBulletin Cloud site. Everything works fine using https://forum.mydomain.com.

    If I or the browser puts in https://www.forum.mydomain.com I get: "vBulletin Solutions || Maintenance Sorry for the inconvenience. We'll be back up and running as fast as possible."

    Can you tell me what I need to do to get forum.mydomain.com to access the vBulletin Cloud forum with or without the "www"?

    Thank you,

    Bill.. .. .
  • Trevor Matthews
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2010
    • 537
    • 4.1.x

    #2
    I needed to do the same but in reverse. I wanted to force www and also force https.
    I used the .htaccess file in the root forum folder and added;
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

    No doubt someone will be along shortly with a better solution but I thought I would mention what I use, you will need to modify it obviously.
    Regards
    Trevor

    Comment


    • MrBillFSE
      MrBillFSE commented
      Editing a comment
      Thanks, I had thought of that because I had to do that a lot for wordpress back in the early days. I don't think that will work for me now since the forum is cloud hosted and I am setting a cname right to vBulletin so the closest anyone gets to my public_html in this case is the name server. Also, vBulletin Cloud already forces the site to https for me.

    • MrBillFSE
      MrBillFSE commented
      Editing a comment
      Originally posted by Trevor Matthews
      No doubt someone will be along shortly with a better solution but I thought I would mention what I use, you will need to modify it obviously.
      Turns out that is the best and simplest way to get this to work.
  • braintrainnerd
    Senior Member
    • Oct 2017
    • 228
    • 5.0.x

    #3
    Nevermind, I think I read your question wrong.

    Comment

    • AttBath82
      New Member
      • Jun 2018
      • 1
      • 5.3.x

      #4
      Hey!

      I set my first forum live yesterday and used a custom domain, when i created the CNAME with my host it worked perfectly for my subdomain (forum.jpextreme.com) but when i decided to drop the sub domain and go straight to the main domain (jpextreme.com) i'm having issues...

      Any ideas?

      Thanks!

      Alex

      Comment

      • Wayne Luke
        vBulletin Technical Support Lead
        • Aug 2000
        • 73981

        #5
        Originally posted by MrBillFSE
        Hello,

        I have set up my custom domain to point to my vBulletin Cloud site. Everything works fine using https://forum.mydomain.com.

        If I or the browser puts in https://www.forum.mydomain.com I get: "vBulletin Solutions || Maintenance Sorry for the inconvenience. We'll be back up and running as fast as possible."

        Can you tell me what I need to do to get forum.mydomain.com to access the vBulletin Cloud forum with or without the "www"?

        Thank you,

        Bill.. .. .
        As this is Cloud, none of the information above is relevant. Cloud customers cannot edit their .htaccess files.

        You will need to set up a second CNAME Redirect to allow www.forum.domain.com to work. You can do this through your domain name provider the same way you set up forum.domain.com.
        Translations provided by Google.

        Wayne Luke
        The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
        vBulletin 5 API

        Comment


        • MrBillFSE
          MrBillFSE commented
          Editing a comment
          Hey Luke, they were no help. They said their system only takes 1 domain and the user has to decide which one. To get both, it is the user's server side problem. In my case the primary domain activated at vBulletin was forum.mydomain.com.

          Here is what I figured out to get www.forum.mydomain.com to work after much trial and error so hopefully it helps someone else.

          1. set www.forum.mydomain.com CNAME to the server IP address

          2. Add the following to .htaccess in the public_html directory:

          RewriteEngine On
          #Force non-www:
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.forum.mydomain.com\.com [NC]
          RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://forum.mydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

        • Wayne Luke
          Wayne Luke commented
          Editing a comment
          That is a solution if you have web hosting using your domain in addition to vBulletin Cloud.

        • MrBillFSE
          MrBillFSE commented
          Editing a comment
          Luke,

          Unfortunately, I could not find any combination of settings in DNS alone to get it to work..
      • Wayne Luke
        vBulletin Technical Support Lead
        • Aug 2000
        • 73981

        #6
        Originally posted by AttBath82
        Hey!

        I set my first forum live yesterday and used a custom domain, when i created the CNAME with my host it worked perfectly for my subdomain (forum.jpextreme.com) but when i decided to drop the sub domain and go straight to the main domain (jpextreme.com) i'm having issues...

        Any ideas?

        Thanks!

        Alex
        You need a sub-domain to access vBulletin cloud sites. We do not support jpextreme.com alone. Your Domain Provider may be able to set up a redirect so that jpextreme.com is redirected to forum.jpextreme.com. You should discuss this with them.
        Translations provided by Google.

        Wayne Luke
        The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
        vBulletin 5 API

        Comment

        • Mrs.T
          Senior Member
          • Nov 2007
          • 1210
          • 6.0.X

          #7
          Originally posted by Wayne Luke

          As this is Cloud, none of the information above is relevant. Cloud customers cannot edit their .htaccess files.

          You will need to set up a second CNAME Redirect to allow www.forum.domain.com to work. You can do this through your domain name provider the same way you set up forum.domain.com.
          We have the same problem as others, everything works fine except if someone puts www at the front. Our host hasn't been much help.

          Wayne, where you say to do it the same way as when first setting up do you mean send www. to the same URL?

          When we first set up we created a subdomain "community" and in the CNAME it goes to the long URL provided by vBulletin cloud which is lots of letters and numbers. All works well.

          So do we create another CNAME called www.community and send it to the same long letter/number cloud URL?

          ​​​​​​



          Comment


          • Mrs.T
            Mrs.T commented
            Editing a comment
            Thanks MrBillFSE yes we have hosting where we can add the htaccess file.

            One other quick question before going that route, would a CNAME of 'www.community' pointing to 'community' work?

          • MrBillFSE
            MrBillFSE commented
            Editing a comment
            Mrs.T I tried that and even tried redirecting (both as 301 and 302) the www and neither way worked.

          • Mrs.T
            Mrs.T commented
            Editing a comment
            OK thanks so much for the help MrBillFSE
        • Wayne Luke
          vBulletin Technical Support Lead
          • Aug 2000
          • 73981

          #8
          Originally posted by MrsTiggywinkle
          Wayne, where you say to do it the same way as when first setting up do you mean send www. to the same URL?

          When we first set up we created a subdomain "community" and in the CNAME it goes to the long URL provided by vBulletin cloud which is lots of letters and numbers. All works well.
          community.domain.tld is a subdomain.

          www.community.domain.tld is a subdomain.

          Both should have CNAME Redirects to XXXXXXXXXXXXX.vbulletin.net. Then they should get you to the same place all the time.

          You should not redirect one CNAME to another CNAME.
          Translations provided by Google.

          Wayne Luke
          The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
          vBulletin 5 API

          Comment


          • Mrs.T
            Mrs.T commented
            Editing a comment
            Thanks Wayne, although I thought MrBillFSE said he tried that and it wouldn't work.

          • Wayne Luke
            Wayne Luke commented
            Editing a comment
            I don't know what he tried or why it wouldn't work.

          • MrBillFSE
            MrBillFSE commented
            Editing a comment
            Look at my next post.
        • MrBillFSE
          New Member
          • Jun 2018
          • 24
          • 5.3.x

          #9
          Originally posted by Wayne Luke

          community.domain.tld is a subdomain.

          www.community.domain.tld is a subdomain.

          Both should have CNAME Redirects to XXXXXXXXXXXXX.vbulletin.net. Then they should get you to the same place all the time.

          You should not redirect one CNAME to another CNAME.

          I know you are the Technical Support Lead, however you need to talk to the other part of the tech support department. You CAN NOT have both WWW and non-WWW CNAMEs pointing to the XXXXXXXXXXXXX.vbulletin.net. ONLY 1 WILL WORK and that is the one that you register in the vBulletin control panel. The other one will go to the vBulletin maintenance page.

          As backup to my comment above that is from FROM YOUR TECH SUPPORT DEPARTMENT:

          -----------------------------------------------
          Trevor Hannant
          27th Jun 2018 06:02am
          Hello.

          You don't need the www with another sub-domain.

          Also, in the Cloud Console:



          ...you haven't set that as your preferred domain. If you want to use http://www.forum.mydomain.com, then you need to update the URL in there so we know what domain you're pointing your records to.

          Please note that you can only have a single domain in our system, if you want to point different variations of your domain URL to the same site, you'll need to set this up via your DNS records.

          Best regards,


          Trevor Hannant
          vBulletin Support Staff

          --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          Therefore ONLY the one domain will work. CNAME to CNAME, does not work. Redirecting a domain in cPanel DOES NOT WORK.

          The only way I found after trying 2 hours of variations was with .htaccess.

          Comment

          • Wayne Luke
            vBulletin Technical Support Lead
            • Aug 2000
            • 73981

            #10
            Then it must be a recent change. Why it was changed, I don't know but will discuss it with the cloud team. I consider this a bug in the platform.
            Last edited by Wayne Luke; Fri 29 Jun '18, 9:29am.
            Translations provided by Google.

            Wayne Luke
            The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
            vBulletin 5 API

            Comment

            • Mrs.T
              Senior Member
              • Nov 2007
              • 1210
              • 6.0.X

              #11
              Originally posted by Wayne Luke
              Then it must be a recent change. Why it was changed, I don't know but will discuss it with the cloud team. I consider this a bug in the platform.
              When we first joined Cloud, August 2017, it was the first question I asked and was told then that you needed to do it through your hosting. I was never told to make two CNAME redirects.

              Will wait and see what you can find out before continuing.

              Comment

              • Wayne Luke
                vBulletin Technical Support Lead
                • Aug 2000
                • 73981

                #12
                Originally posted by MrsTiggywinkle

                When we first joined Cloud, August 2017, it was the first question I asked and was told then that you needed to do it through your hosting. I was never told to make two CNAME redirects.

                Will wait and see what you can find out before continuing.
                CNAME Redirects are a method of going through the hosting.

                I've created a bug report on the issue to allow at least one alternative subdomain. I would prefer two but we'll see what the Cloud team says.
                Translations provided by Google.

                Wayne Luke
                The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
                vBulletin 5 API

                Comment

                • Mrs.T
                  Senior Member
                  • Nov 2007
                  • 1210
                  • 6.0.X

                  #13
                  Originally posted by Wayne Luke

                  CNAME Redirects are a method of going through the hosting.
                  Yes, I realise that. What I meant was I was given detailed instructions on how to create a CNAME to point the special cloud url so the forum worked but not told to do another if I wanted it to work on www. Even though a short time later I asked how to make www work I was told we can't help ask your hosting - a simple "make another CNAME like you did before but this time enter www.community" would have sufficed if that's what you do.

                  Anyway, thanks for creating the bug report

                  Comment

                  • MrBillFSE
                    New Member
                    • Jun 2018
                    • 24
                    • 5.3.x

                    #14
                    Yes,

                    Thank you. It just seems awfully silly not to allow www also with a simple CNAME. The way it is now, the www has to hit the hosting server and then to vBulletin.

                    Comment

                    • braintrainnerd
                      Senior Member
                      • Oct 2017
                      • 228
                      • 5.0.x

                      #15
                      Originally posted by MrBillFSE

                      You CAN NOT have both WWW and non-WWW CNAMEs pointing to the XXXXXXXXXXXXX.vbulletin.net. ONLY 1 WILL WORK and that is the one that you register in the vBulletin control panel. The other one will go to the vBulletin maintenance page.
                      This is the exact problem that I had when I changed domains (had no www problems, just a change in the name of the domain). The redirect from the old domain went straight to the maintenance page. As a result, I had to turn off the redirect from the old domain.

                      There is an option in Google Webmaster tools to change the domains from old to new, so that the search rankings aren't lost, but unfortunately due to this problem, I could not redirect and thus Google treated my new domain as a brand new website and all my pages in the google index were lost, along with all the search rankings.

                      My old domain ranked well, my new domain basically started from scratch, and it took almost 2 months for most of my pages to be reindexed by Google.

                      Comment

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