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Advanced domain setup

DNS with multiple domains 

The Lumen platform only accepts requests with a domain name that is explicitly added to an environment. For example, if you add www.example.com to Lumen as www.example.com but then choose to create a blog.example.com CNAME record pointing at www.example.com.c.section.io., visitors to http://blog.example.com will receive an error page showing HTTP 409 Conflict.


This is because blog.example.com has not been explicitly associated with a Lumen environment. In this case you would need to add blog.example.com to a Lumen environment and then create a blog.example.com.c.section.io CNAME record for blog.example.com in your DNS hosting console. The same is true if you register a bare domain record such as example.com. Each domain must be specified in full in order for the request to be accepted by Lumen.


If you would like your Lumen application to respond to multiple domains, you can add them on bottom of the Domains page under Domains. You can also add or delete additional domains using our API:

                POST 
/account/{accountId}/application/{applicationId}/environment/{environmentName}/domain/{hostName}

DELETE
/account/{accountId}/application/{applicationId}/environment/{environmentName}/domain/{hostName}

 

Please review our HTTPS setup page to ensure all of your domains are properly covered by either our automated HTTPS or your own custom certificates to prevent certificate errors.

 

If the additional domain names should redirect to the canonical domain name to improve search engine ranking, this can be achieved with a basic Varnish Cache configuration, for example:

                vcl 4.0;

sub vcl_recv {

  return (synth(700, ""));

}

sub vcl_synth {

    if (resp.status == 700) {

        set resp.status = 302; # or 301 if preferred

        set resp.http.Location = "https://canonical-domain.example.com" + req.url;

        return(deliver);

    }

}

Make bare domain CNAME records

Bare domains are DNS records without www, also called Zone Apex, Naked Domain, and Root Domain. To go live on Lumen, you need to set up a CNAME record pointing to the Lumen platform. While this is simple to do for any subdomain such as www, creating a CNAME record for a bare domain can cause some problems because a CNAME record trumps all other records and can cause issues with MX records—potentially leading to broken email, etc.

 

Here are a couple workarounds to this problem:

 

  • Switch to running your site on www. This means that users will type in www.domain.com to get to your website. You would then set up a HTTP 301 redirect from the bare domain to the www version so that users (and SEO) are automatically redirected to the www site. With this configuration fully in place, the bare domain points to the origin, www points to Lumen, and the origin servers redirects to the www. For a deeper discussion of the impact of serving your website off of the www instead of the bare domain, see this article.

  • Use a DNS provider that supports a special ALIAS/ANAME record type at the bare domain. These records are like CNAME records but do not cause the issues described above. If your DNS hosting provider doesn't support ALIAS/ANAME records, you can switch to Lumen hosted DNS.

 

For technical background on CNAMEs and the bare domains see: RFC 1034 section 3.6.2.

Use Lumen with an outside DNS

To use Lumen with an outside DNS, go to your DNS hosting provider’s console and complete the steps necessary to add a new domain to Lumen. If you have not yet gone through the going live tutorial, please visit it for a more in depth view of the entire process.

 

DNS resources

Each registrar has its own method of adding CNAME records. Below are some links to instructions on adding DNS records for common hosts and DNS providers:
 

 

Need help? Contact your domain name provider directly.

Use Lumen‑hosted DNS

To simplify management for your websites, Lumen can provide DNS hosting. This is especially useful for pointing a zone‑apex record (ie bare domain) at a Lumen endpoint if your current DNS hosting provider does not support the ALIAS or ANAME record types.

 

Hosting your DNS with Lumen also provides convenient access to DNS management within the dashboard.

 

Begin hosting DNS with Lumen

To enable hosted DNS with Lumen:

  1. Navigate to the DNS page for your Lumen application’s hosted environment (e.g., production).

  2. Below the Change your DNS to go live heading, you should find another heading labeled Lumen Hosted DNS. The paragraph that follows describes the DNS zone name that we have detected that your domain belongs to. If we have detected this zone correctly, and you have access to your DNS registrar to change the name servers for this zone, you can proceed.

Note: Although DNS hosting and DNS registration are often thought of as the same thing and many companies offer both services, they are distinct and can be provided by different companies. The majority of the DNS record changes described in our DNS documentation (making CNAME or ALIAS changes for example) happen in your DNS hosting console, but changing your name servers must be done with your DNS registrar.


Your DNS registrar is the organization from which you purchased your actual domain name, not necessarily where your records are maintained and hosted—although again these often go together in practice. Your DNS registrar is the authority on what DNS servers are allowed to answer DNS queries for your website. Inputting Lumen nameservers into your DNS registrar gives us permission to respond to DNS queries for your site. Note as well that it is possible to enable the Lumen DNS zone and check to make sure all the records are correct before you change nameservers. We can provision a DNS zone before this change is made but not answer queries.

  1. Click Enable Hosted DNS button.

    The DNS page refreshes after a few moments with new instructions.
  1. For your convenience, our system will at this point attempt to copy the most common DNS records from your existing DNS hosting provider into our database, but it can miss some records. Follow the link in “Step 1” of the new DNS page to view the records that have been copied. Verify that the existing records are correct and add any missing records.
  1. When you have verified and corrected the copied records, return the DNS page for your Lumen application’s environment. “Step 2” on this page lists the new name servers that you will need to enter for your zone at your DNS registrar. Once this is done the change may take up to 48 hours to propagate to all DNS servers globally—after that you can manage your DNS records via Lumen and your old DNS hosting provider is not used. You will want to wait the full 48 hours and check DNS propagation globally before you turn off your old DNS hosting.
  1. Click Verify on the DNS page to test if HTTP requests for your site are reaching the Lumen endpoints.

 

Once you have changed your DNS, ensure you’ve set up HTTPS.

Manage your DNS hosted with Lumen

Once you enable hosted DNS for a Lumen application, you can access the zone-management page in two ways:

 

  1. From the DNS page of a hosted environment (Step 1 links to the zone page) or …
  2. On the left navigation, click DNS Hosting (under Account).

 

From the zone page for a particular zone you can view:

 

  1. The name servers that should be configured at your DNS registrar.
  2. The table of DNS records defined in the zone.

 

From the records table you can:

 

  1. Delete records that are not associated with a Lumen site. Upon first click of the Delete button beside the target record, the button label will change to Confirm, upon clicking again the record will be deleted and begin propagating immediately.
  2. Add new records by clicking the Add button at the bottom of the table, filling the required fields, then clicking the Save button. You cannot create a CNAME record at the zone apex, use an ALIAS record instead for this purpose.
  3. Edit existing records by clicking the corresponding Edit button. The record types A, ALIAS, or CNAME can be changed to another record type in this same set and when saved the change will be applied so the record does not appear missing during the transition.

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