>>>> "nic" == nic <nic(a)niss.ac.uk>
writes:
nic> Put in an A record for
xemacs.org, and make
www.xemacs.org a
nic> CNAME of
xemacs.org.
That's not a good idea. Presumably, the situation is this:
o the name of the web site is
www.xemacs.org.
o for political reasons, we wish people who type "xemacs.org" into
the URL section of their browsers to be able to reach
www.xemacs.org.
What you're suggesting (and what I see has been implemented) reverses
the
xemacs.org/www.xemacs.org roles.
This is problematic because redirects are saying the site name is
www.xemacs.org. Hmm, there's another problem: the forward and reverse
DNS do not match for
xemacs.org [207.96.122.8]. This could confuse
search engines and stuff that build indices.
Here's what really should happen:
o
www.xemacs.org should be a CNAME for
gwyn.tux.org
o
xemacs.org should be a CNAME for
gwyn.tux.org
o Apache's httpd.conf should have a VirtualHost directive for
www.xemacs.org that has the actual XEmacs site
o Apache's httpd.conf should have a VirtualHost directive that will
take any requested URL and rewrite it for
www.xemacs.org with a
permanent redirect.
This way, no matter how someone gets to the site, all of the Right
Stuff will happen to make sure that the Right URL is displayed with
each document. So when someone adds a bookmark, it'll be for the
right thing. When a search engine adds an entry, it will be for the
right URL. Duplicates are infinitely annoying. And there won't be
any of the badness of having DNS in a weird state with forward lying
and reverse and forward not agreeing.
(Sorry for taking so long to reply. Been busy.)
--
Matt Curtin cmcurtin(a)interhack.net
http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/