Connecting to root domain - AWS Route 53 EC2

Question

I set up an EC2 instance with an elastic IP. I registered a domain with Namecheap and transferred my name servers from them to Route 53.

I created an A-IP4 record and plugged in my elastic IP address. Didn't work.

Then I decided to try creating the A-IP4 using www. It worked.

I've tried setting up a pointer from www.mysite.com to mysite.com, no luck. I've searched around for hours in Amazon's docs but still can't figure out how to get it setup. Does anyone know how to set this up so I can access my root domain? I'd hate to be stuck with www.

Answer 1

AFAIK you can not create an A record at the zone apex, only an AWS-specific Alias type.

The Alias can refer to an ELB, S3 website, CloudFront distribution or another Route 53 record set. You have a couple of options:

a) put your instance behind an ELB, and create example.com as an Alias record pointing to your ELB. Or,

b) Create example.com as an Alias which points to the www.example.com CNAME.

Answer 2

I had the same issue and was a little confused. Turns out it's pretty easy. First create the www.example.com name pointing to your elastic ip as an A record. Then create an additional A record as an alias and leave the name section blank. That will allow your ec2 instance to resolve to zone apex (root) and www.