Bare domain or www not opening? Check the record at each name before touching the website

Two names, two separate answers

Your business domain, such as yourbusiness.co.uk, is the bare domain, also called the zone apex. www.yourbusiness.co.uk is a different name. DNS keeps a separate set of records for each, so one can work while the other returns an error, a parking page or an old server. A browser tests whichever one the visitor typed, so the fault looks random until you check both.

The usual causes are a missing record at one name, a record that still points at a previous host, a host that was never told to accept the bare domain for your site, or a redirect that was meant to join the two and does not. All four are visible without logging in anywhere.

• No answer for a name means no record exists for it.
• Different addresses for the two names usually means one still points at an old server.
• A parking page means the name reaches a host that does not know your site.

Why an alias at the bare domain is a trap

A CNAME says "this name is an alias for that one." RFC 1034 section 3.6.2 says a name holding an alias should hold no other data. The bare domain always has other data: the zone's own records and, for most businesses, mail and verification records. Our reading is that this is why advice to "just add a CNAME" at the bare domain is risky: it collides with the mail and verification records that share that name.

Some providers solve this themselves. Cloudflare documents CNAME flattening, which resolves the alias target and answers with its address so the bare domain can behave like an alias. It warns that flattening every record can break third-party domain verification, and that an empty answer can appear if the target has no address records, which can look like a propagation delay. cPanel's Zone Editor page describes its ALIAS record type as experimental and not standards-compliant, so names and behaviour differ between providers. Use the method your own DNS provider documents, not a recipe from another one.

• If the host gave you an address, use address records at the bare domain.
• If the host gave you only a hostname, ask your DNS provider what it offers for the bare domain.
• Never remove mail or verification records to make room for an alias.

A safe first investigation

You can see what each name returns with read-only lookups. Run them for both names and write down the results before changing anything: the address records, any alias at www, the mail records at the bare domain, and where an http request to each name ends up. Keep the output; it is also the "before" picture for any repair.

• dig +short A yourbusiness.co.uk and dig +short AAAA yourbusiness.co.uk for the bare domain.
• dig +short CNAME www.yourbusiness.co.uk and dig +short A www.yourbusiness.co.uk for www.
• dig +short MX yourbusiness.co.uk and dig +short TXT yourbusiness.co.uk, to record the mail records that must not change.
• curl -sSIL -o /dev/null -w "%{url_effective} %{http_code} %{num_redirects}" http://yourbusiness.co.uk for each of the four address variants.

What fixes it, and what does not

The fix is almost always one or two records and one redirect: the right address or provider-documented alias at the name that fails, and a permanent redirect from the less preferred name to the preferred one so only one address is ever shown. Pick www or the bare domain; either is fine, but pick one.

Things that do not fix it: waiting for DNS to spread when the record was never there, clearing the browser cache, moving the domain to a new registrar, or changing the website itself. A certificate warning at one name is a separate fault with its own repair.

• Change the smallest number of records, keep a note of each previous value, and compare mail records before and after.
• Check http and https at both names, and that the certificate names the address a visitor reaches.

How the paid outcome is accepted

The fixed-price job for this, a published test price of £125 that has not been tested with buyers, ends with a four-row table: each of http and https at the bare and www names, with the final address, a 200 status and no more than two redirects. The mail and verification records at the bare domain must be identical before and after, and the certificate at the preferred address must be valid and name it. You pay after you sign off.

It does not fit when both names fail because the domain has expired or the host is down, when nameservers are moving at the same time, or when nobody can edit the DNS. The linked records cover moving DNS and certificate faults.