Setup CNAME alias from one domain to another

Question

I'm attempting to satisfy the Cookieless domain suggestion of Google's Page Speed plugin and am running into a wall with my host who can't be bothered with the details of why it's not working. Accessing st1.dgcstatic.com should be the same as accessing st1.defunctgames.com; however, this is not the case.

Have I missed a step of configuration? Do I need to wait for DNS propagation? You can see below my steps of experimentation.

DNS Setup:

1. Created CNAME of st1.dgcstatic.com to point to st1.defunctgames.com on dgcstatic.com
2. Created A record of st1.defunctgames.com on defunctgames.com
3. Created sub-domain of st1.defunctgames.com on defunctgames.com

When I run a tracert st1.dgcstatic.com it produces the following result:

C:\Users\Patrick>tracert st1.dgcstatic.com

Tracing route to st1.defunctgames.com [50.22.11.10]

When I run a host st1.dgcstatic.com it produces the following result:

patrick:~ patrick$ host st1.dgcstatic.com
st1.dgcstatic.com is an alias for st1.defunctgames.com.
st1.defunctgames.com has address 50.22.11.10

And finally, using this site it seems to produce the same results of showing things configured correctly.

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3ast1.dgcstatic.com

According to all these results, the world can see my DNS changes, my host on the other hand gave me the "Wait for propagation" rigmarole When asked why this isn't working.

Answer 1

It looks to me that your domain names are set up correctly (st1.dgcstatic.com is an alias of st1.defunctgames.com), but the web host needs to have a mapping or configuration to know how to serve st1.dgcstatic.com content.

Both domains are resolving to 50.22.11.10, but that is most likely a shared IP address host. (Visiting http://50.22.11.10 demonstrates that it's shared - it can't resolve to your site just by the IP address.)

You'll need to configure through your webhost provider the second domain. Hosting companies do this differently; in my case it's just a matter of adding a new domain to my account (extra $1/mo), and configuring the path for HTML source files.