How to get a domain without the "www"???

umm all domains can do that All except register.com I believe, which effs it up and makes u enter www for em I believe.

I recommend joker.com! 12.50 for a domain!

Well actually is it based on the server config. (Which if you are having someone hosting it then you are at their mercy.)

For example I route all traffic to my domain to the web server, but I could specify which sub-domains? I would route where.

I have one client where I route vpn.domainname.com to the vpn server, http://www., to the web server, database. to the database server, mail. to the mail server... Get the gist? That is how the domain stuff works....

http://www.sitehq.co.uk <= another great host (that does allow www-less domains)

http://www.godaddy.com

$8.95 per year. Have not had a problem yet.

What you want to do is run your own Domain Name Server (DNS)

You can do this with Mac OS X client. You can go to macupdate.com and look for dns and find an app that will help set up the config files. It is fairly complicated. Ideally you would read "DNS and BIND" from http://www.ora.com

That would give the the knowledge you need to realize that any registrar should let you run your own DNS server, and once you do that, you do not need to have www in your domain.

What you buy is the last two parts of the domain name, like

macrumors.com

then you create a zone file that lists all the hosts in that domain

www
mail
smtp
dns
ntp

Then you create a reverse zone that lists
all the ip addresses first and then tells a person what the name of the computer is

128.2.6.48 titan.net.cmu.edu

Then there are MX entries, SOA entries, take a couple of days to read the book above if you really want to control your own dns.

If you don't, why don't you go to http://www.dyndns.org

they will host your dns, allow you to resolve a hostname on a computer whose IP address is not static. They have a nice interface for adding names.

You are referring to two different topics. Registering a domain name gives you <something>.[com,org,etc].

What you are reffering to is DNS (Domain Name System/Service). Registering a domain name has little to do with DNS, other than the fact that when you register a domain, you are required to enter the IP addresses of the authoritative DNS servers for that domain. The servers at those IP addresses handle the rest.

For example, when you enter domain.com and it doesn't know what it is, that is a configuration problem on the DNS server. Specifically, when the request comes into the DNS server, it looks at your request and says "Yes I am authoritative for domain.com, however, I do not have an entry".

What you need to do is have your DNS provider add that entry in. In BIND, it would look like this:

domain.com IN A <enter IP address here>
http://www.domain.com IN A <enter IP address here>

And when the DNS server would look at this, it would know that domain.com resolves to an IP as well as http://www.domain.com. Usually, they are the same IP address, but they could technically be different.

Originally posted by tomf87
You are referring to two different topics. Registering a domain name gives you <something>.[com,org,etc].

Click to expand...

hum, just like I said in the post just before yours.

Originally posted by peterjhill
hum, just like I said in the post just before yours.

Click to expand...

Apologies for that. I just hit post reply without reading all of the replies.