example.com gets invalid url but www.example.com works great

Question

I am new to the web mastering stuff so please bear with me. My problem is that I have a domain example.com. If I go directly to it I get an invalid url error, however www.example.com works just great. Here is the error message

Invalid URL

The requested URL "[no URL]", is invalid.
Reference #9.b20fdd58.1490883354.a0914c3

We're using GoDaddy for domain, cloudflare for dns and hubspot for hosting some parts of our website.

So in GoDaddy I have my example.com. It has nothing set on it except the nameservers for the cloudflare. In cloudflare I have set a cname of example.com to be an alias of www.example.com Here are some server congfigs that probably might be relevant. There is this thing called cname flattening that happens. Also interestingly enough if I go to the hubspot url where my www.example.com is redirected it gives back the same error. And in hubspot I have my www.example.com to be primary for content tools and then all the hubspot urls are redirecting to www.example.com.

Please help me and thank you all very much!

Answer 1

You need to create an A record with the IP of the webserver. This is because the bare hostnames with just domain.com can't be CNAME. Here is what you do: Ping the working address with www:

ping www.secretexample.com

Ping the non-working address without www:

ping secretexample.com

If they show the same address, or just the last number differs (round robin), the problem is in the shared hosting and you shouldn't try fixing it in the domains. If the second example fails, add the A record with the IP obtained from the first ping with www.

Answer 2

The problem was that Hubspot works only with urls that have www. So there should be domain forwarding for root to go to www. Doing it with GoDaddy is just a breeze. However in cloudflare there is no domain forwarding but there is url forwarding. I've set url forwarding and made the dns record to be processed by cloudflare (the orange cloud in the cloudflare). Thus the issue was solved.