# Installing Discourse on regular domain

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-regular-domain/257783
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [March 11, 2023, 10:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-regular-domain/257783 "2023-03-11T10:02:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![mattdm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mattdm/32/216484_2.png) [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2023, 3:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-regular-domain/257783/2 "2023-03-11T15:50:10Z")

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I think you’re referring to [Configure your hosted Discourse site to run at the root or apex domain (e.g. example.com)](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-your-hosted-discourse-site-to-run-at-the-root-or-apex-domain-e-g-example-com/60951) — which only applies to instances hosted by Discourse. I don’t think this applies to individual, single-instance hosting.

The issue is that this hosting setup\[1\] normally expects the configured name to be a `CNAME` record, which is a type of alias. The `C` stands for “canonical”.\[2\] For example, the record dor _this_ site, `meta.discourse.org`, is a CNAME (as I write this) pointing to `app-cname-target.cdck-prod-meta.discourse.cloud`.

Because of the way DNS delegation is structured — where the top-level domain like `.org` or `.com` sends requests for second-level domains to a server configured by the registrant\[3\] — you can only configure CNAMEs for hostnames _under_ the domain you get.

To work around this limitation, several DNS providers provide what they call an `ANAME` record, or “CNAME flattening”. This works just fine with _any_ record, including one for your delegated “bare” or “apex” domain. This is not a _real_, standard part of DNS, but proprietary behind-the-scenes cleverness provided by the DNS company — and, simply, not every provider does that.

There is something else you can do, though:

- Set up your “apex” domain to redirect, so that for example [example.net](http://example.net) redirects to [forum.example.net](http://forum.example.net). Here, people would still see and use the longer name, but they could _get there_ from the short one.

And _possibly_ another option:

- Set up a transparent reverse proxy on your “apex” domain. This is complicated and I’m not sure will work easily with CDCK’s setup, but I’m mentioning it for completeness.

* * *

1. by the way it happens to be designed and implemented by CDCK, not as an inherent limitation of hosting 

2. Meant in the sense common in computing of “prefered official name” — one might have [www.example.org](http://www.example.org) as a CNAME to [serverhost003.example.org](http://serverhost003.example.org), but if server number 3 goes down you just change the CNAME and keep going. Oddly, Merriam-Webster does not really have an entry for this sense. 

3. and, in fact, this can continue on — `example.org` could delegate `stuff.example.org`, and `stuff.example.org` could delegate `things.stuff.example.org` right on down

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-regular-domain/257783)._