I have this working on one of my client sites, but have not been able to get it working on my own partner site. Not sure what the difference is… perhaps it’s a DNS thing?
When we get requests to forward site traffic to one domain, say www.example.com, we setup redirect that forwards all traffic to this domain. So all domains added to the site (exaple.org, example.net, etc.) and all their www subdomains, along with trial domain, will forward to www.exapmle.com.
This redirect rule causes a conflict with landing pages functionality, as domains are forwarded by web server before client request gets to CMS. Hence, custom landing will only work for domain everything is forwarded to.
It is obviously a conflict and we will work to resolve this by integrating domain forwarding functionality into CMS and/or Portal settings, making forwarding routes transparent and editable by partners.
Right now, if you have requested us to create redirect for your site in the past and having issues with landing pages functionality, the following can be done:
We can disable redirect altogether, thus removing conflicts.
We can change redirect to be more specific, forwarding only (for example, no pun intended) example.com to www.example.com and example.net to www.example.net. You’ll be able to use custom landings for www subdomains but not root domain, in this case. We can also only forward you trial domain to one of the live domains.
You can wait for domain forwarding to be integrated in future releases, which probably will be the case for sites that only have one domain.
To recap: landing pages functionality is not at fault here, it’s a conflict with domain forwarding functionality that hasn’t been integrated or released yet, and that we setup on partner requests.
Are you saying that it is not possible right now to redirect traffic for ‘Otherdomain.com’ to /otherpage.html? But we can ask Treepl Support to create a custom redirect for the WWW subdomain (‘WWW.otherdomain.com’) to go to a unique page (’/otherpage.html’)?
So if I’m reading this correctly, then it means an incoming request to “WWW.otherdomain.com” can resolve to ‘/otherpage.html’ unique landing page. But an incoming request to “Otherdomain.com” would only resolve to default ‘/index.html’ homepage. Is this correct?
If yes, then conceivably we could solve this using the registrar default name servers to configure a DNS CNAME record for the root domain to resolve to the www subdomain, plus a corresponding A-record to point ‘www’ to Treepl server IP.
i.e.
CNAME = Prefix: *
Destination: www.otherdomain.com
This would mean that all requests to Otherdomain.com will be directed to the WWW subdomain via the name server DNS CNAME. Treepl would only receive traffic requests for the www subdomain which will always resolve to the unique landing page.
Are my assumptions correct? Are there any holes in this theory/solution?
There’s no way to set up domain level redirect, as in www.example.com -> example.com (or wise versa), you have to request such redirects. But having this redirect means that site gets all requests from one domain, rendering landing pages functionality meaningless.
While CNAME points to another domain, server still sees domain that was originally entered on client. The bigger problem is that root domain record can not be CNAME.
Unless we have requested a domain level redirect such as www.domain.com -> domain.com. In this case subdomains can’t have custom landing pages because there is a conflict.
Is this correct?
I’m migrating a site right now that has a subdomain that points to a custom landing page and I want to make sure it’s possible before completing the migration.
@Alex_B_Centrifuge I did it quite successfully with a site we just launched, that had about 28 sub-domains. Call me at my office if you need clarification/help.
@Alex_B_Centrifuge these were the rules set by Hover.com to handle Sub-Domains. So this is at the Domain Registrar level. I’m sure GoDaddy, etc. may have other rules. Yes, these are Zone Records.