Heroku required cname records. Some DNS hosts do not support pointing the root level domain (mysite.com) to a cname. There is no problem setting a non root level domain (www.mysite.com) to a cname
cnames: host=mysite.com points to=herokugarden.com
notea record: host=@ was removed.
cnames: host=mail points to=ghs.google.com
note: entries for calendar, docs, and others point to ghs.google.com, too.
mx: priority=10 host=@ goes to=ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
note: priority 20 for ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM and ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
note: priority 30 for aspmx2.googlemail.com - aspmx5.googlemail.com
note: good instructions at google and tester
txt: host=@ txt value=v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com -all
cnames: host=photos points to=domains.smugmug.com
a record: host=*, points to=<ip of hosting company>
note: all domains including www.mysite.com and mistypes ww.mysite.com will go to the typical host.
use an .htaccess file to redirect www.mysite.com back to mysite.com.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#rewrite www.mysite.com -> mysite.com (subsites have trailing directory - so remove it)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^w+\.(.+)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
#photo site is plural
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^photo\.(.+)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://photos.%1/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
I am potentially posting static content in the amazon bucket images.mysite.com - all lower case. Must be the same name as the static host name
cnames: host=images points to=images.mysite.com.s3.amazonaws.com