How to configure Google Domains + Heroku w a Naked Domain

Question

I have a domain loading in a web browser using Heroku and Google Domains. Right now the domain loads with a www: http://www. XXX .com.

If I enter the URL w/o the WWW like http:// XXX .com I get the following error in Chrome: "XXX.com’s server DNS address could not be found"

What do I need to do so that the following happens:

1. This loads - http:// mydomain.com
2. http://www. mydomain.com redirects to http:// mydomain.com

Thank you

Answer 1

It's advisable to make the www subdomain the default here, such that the root/naked domain redirects to www. This is in line with Heroku recommendations, which states:

For maximum scalability and resiliency applications should avoid using DNS A-records and instead use a DNS provider that supports CNAME functionality at the apex, or use sub-domains exclusively

You can achieve this with Google Domains Synthetic Records:

• Go to the Synthetic Records section
• Select Subdomain forward
• Enter @ for subdomain, and www.xyz.com for destination

Answer 2

Another solution is to use some 3rd party DNS provider like Cloudflare to do this. I just went through this same process. App hosted on Heroku with a domain purchased from Google. Signed up for a free account with Cloudflare and was up and running in about an hour following this guide: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/205893698

Things I did:

• Delete DNS rules I had tried adding earlier to Google under "Custom resource records"
• Have just one domain added in Heroku for the root: "myapp.com" (not "www.myapp.com", not "*.myapp.com") which gave me a DNS address like "blah-blah-12345-herokudns.com"

• In Cloudflare add two CNAME records on the DNS page:

  1. CNAME "myapp.com" blah-blah-12345-herokudns.com
  2. CNAME "www" blah-blah-12345-herokudns.com
• Copy over custom DNS nameservers into Google from Cloudflare

After that now I can go to myapp.com and it just works. Super stoked because I really didn't want www.myapp.com.

One cool thing is I had already set up an GSuite account for the domain and when I signed up for Cloudflare it imported all the DNS rules from Google, including the MX records for email so it worked seamlessly.