Different websites on "example.com" and "www.example.com"

Question

I have an A record for my domain for example.com that points to my server's IP address. I would like to modify my DNS records so that www.example.com points to another server.

Is this possible, and would I do that by simply creation a new A type record? Wouldn't example.com override my www.example.com record?

Answer 1

Technically, www is a subdomain of example.com. As with any subdomain, you can create a CNAME record to point it to another host. See this for more on CNAME's and an example of pointing www to another host: DNS Made Easy: Example 3

I'd strongly recommend against doing this however if it will take them to another site because it will really confuse visitors since most sites redirect www.example.com to example.com or vice versa, and they might type either into a browser's address bar.

Neither one overrides the other, unless setup in your server to do so through a redirect (i.e., a 301 redirect).

Answer 2

The proper way to do this is you would make an A record named @ that points to the IP where example.com sits and an A record named www that points to the IP where www.example.com sits.

Some DNS services (such as Amazon's route53) use a blank A record, rather than naming it @.