A Canonical Name Record or CNAME-record is a type of DNS-record that links an alias name to a real, or canonical, domain name.
CNAME-records are usually used to link a subdomain, such as “www” or “mail”, to the domain in which the content of that subdomain is hosted.
The most famous example of a CNAME-record is the redirect from www.mydomain.com to mydomain.com. This way the website can be called up in two ways, with and without www. before.
Follow these steps in the control panel to set a CNAME-record:
- Go to “My products”> “DNS & forwarding management”> Click on the “Manage DNS” button to the right of your domain name.
- Select “CNAME-records” in the menu on the left.
- To change an existing CNAME-record , choose the host that you want to change and click on the three dots to the right and then on “Edit record”. Enter the new record and click on “Change CNAME record”.
Add a new CNAME-record by clicking on “+ Add” at the top. Give a name to the subdomain in the left text field or leave it blank if you want to create the A-record for the domain name itself. Enter the record and click on “Add CNAME record”.
- The changes are activated. Remember that this can take 1 to 4 hours. You can check the active records via: http://whois.net
Tip: You can always leave the TTL value at the default value of 3600.
Changes to your CNAME records will only take effect after 1 to 4 hours
The distribution time is usually 1 hour, but can go up to 4.