Heroku SSL DNS Settings

Question

I am using Namecheap for domain registration and for DNS, and using Heroku for hosting. I have purchased an SSL certificate through Namecheap and set it up with Heroku, and have it nearly working perfectly.

Currently, I have a DNS CNAME record with host "www" pointing to "[whatever].herokussl.com.", and a "@" host record set to URL Redirect (301) to "http://www.[domain].com".

My app itself forces all HTTP traffic to redirect to HTTPS, so "http://www.[domain].com" goes to "https://www.[domain].com".

I am getting the following results:

http://www.[domain].com - properly navigates to site as HTTPS
https://www.[domain].com - properly navigates to site as HTTPS
http://[domain].com - properly navigates to site as HTTPS

https://[domain].com - **does not** navigate to site, and instead the browser cannot find the page

I believe this has to do with how the URL Redirect behaves behind the scenes. I had originally done this as CNAME record pointing directly to "[whatever].herokussl.com.", but apparently doing that on the zone apex blocks MX records...

What do I need to do to get the desired behavior? I simply want all naked or "www" domains to point to my "www" domain.

UPDATE: More information regarding my DNS settings

HOST NAME          IP ADDRESS/URL               RECORD TYPE
---------          --------------               -----------
@                  http://www.[domain].com      URL Redirect (301)
www                [whatever].herokussl.com.    CNAME (Alias)

My SSL certificate was not a wildcard, just an EssentialSSL certificate from Comodo. I'm fine if only www.[domain].com works (with a redirect from the naked domain), although when I was using a CNAME for both the apex and "www", it was working as a naked domain with SSL just fine.

yfeldblum yfeldblum · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-15T06:40:23

If you use DnsSimple, you can use their ALIAS record feature.

The DnsSimple ALIAS record is not a standard DNS record type, and is not the same thing as a CNAME record. Rather, DnsSimple supports it in a special way, by performing the DNS resolution for you and returning to your browser the results. This is different from all other DNS records, where the DNS server performs no processing but simply returns the record to your browser on-demand.

There may be other DNS vendors with their own similar features.

However, with only vanilla DNS, HTTP-only 3xx's from your nameserver, and Heroku, there is no way to get SSL to the zone apex (the domain name with no www.).

Heroku SSL DNS Settings

1 Answers