topic Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www in ArcGIS Hub Questions

Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

SaraFrankenfeld — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 13:40:10 GMT

Yesterday we added a custom domain for a hub site. The site is working if I go to https://www.firstwilderness.com but if I go to just https://firstwilderness.com I get a "server not found" error. Did we miss a step somewhere?

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

JustinPrather — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 14:01:45 GMT

Hi @SaraFrankenfeld!

Thanks for posting your question!

Try these directions found at the following URL in our documentation:

You can set up a redirect on your root domain resolving to a CNAME on www. For example, browsing to example.com goes to www.example.com. The CNAME of www is registered to hub.arcgis.com. This setup allows traffic from example.com to end up at the site.

https://doc.arcgis.com/en/hub/sites/use-a-custom-domain.htm

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

SaraFrankenfeld — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 13:24:22 GMT

@JustinPrather So, here's the response from our IT person:

"That is what we did.

Per the article, www.firstwilderness.com will work, but not firstwilderness.com

That is because the root level (firstwilderness.com) can only point to an ip address.

The second level (www.) is appended to the first level with the CNAME record I created (thus making www.firstwilderness.com) and can point to a named site.

Since CNAME records are meant for second level (in this case www) there is no way for it work without www.

Per the article, 'ArcGIS Hub only supports CNAME domain name service (DNS) entries.'"

Is that correct? Or are we missing something?

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

SaraFrankenfeld — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 14:52:44 GMT

@JustinPratherHi Justin - I just wanted to follow up on this again. We had already read the link in the ESRI help you provided, and it is very confusing to both myself and our IT director. As of now, we cannot figure out how to make this domain work without having a "www" in front (in other words, I want to go to https://firstwilderness.com, but it is not working. Only https://www.firstwilderness.com is working).

Can you please confirm that either 1) it won't work without the www or 2) it WILL work, and if so, please let us know exactly what we need to do to make it work.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

SJM — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 20:21:20 GMT

I am currently having the same issue, was this ever resolved and if so please share how. Thank you.

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

ACrateau — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 18:59:42 GMT

@SaraFrankenfeld Hi Sara,

We are working through the same problem with a custom domain and wondered if you were able to successfully setup your site to support not using www

Thanks!

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

SaraFrankenfeld — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 13:09:33 GMT

We never did get it successfully set up without using www - very frustrating. However our IT guy was able to do something on his end. This is what he said: "I set the www cname record to hub.argis.com". Then we did a redirect from firstwilderness.com to www.firstwilderness.com

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

Arayara — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 18:37:56 GMT

For some domain registrars, like Name Silo, you have to set their WWW Redirect template. May take some hours to work. Works fine here.

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

AlderMaps — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 22:44:08 GMT

Adding my 2 cents here for posterity since I finally tackled this issue today myself.

My GIS portfolio is a Hub Site w/custom domain; I set up my CNAME record with the subdomain of www just like @SaraFrankenfeld, but I also wanted the root/apex domain to get me (or more importantly prospective employers) to the Site. I don't imagine most folks are still typing www.yourdomain.com these days; they are just typing yourdomain.com, and I want it to work either way.

This CAN WORK. But I think what neither the documentation nor @JustinPrather make quite clear here is that setting up the redirect has to be done with your domain registrar, not with the ArcGIS Hub Site. Esri has added a redirect capability in the domain settings for a Hub Site, but that will only redirect from one subdomain to another (oldsub.yourdomain.com to newsub.yourdomain.com); you cannot redirect www to your root domain from Esri's end (at least not that I could figure out today).

My domain is currently parked at Wordpress.com, and in this case I simply needed to purchase a redirect for a nominal fee (same price as a .com domain/year). I set the redirect to www.mydomain.com, and now I can type mydomain.com OR www.mydomain.com and I land on my Site.

I expect GoDaddy & other registrars will have a similar straightforward redirect option.

Re: Custom Domain Issue: www vs no www

SajoyP — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 16:19:41 GMT

Hi @SaraFrankenfeld! I know it's been a while since you posted this question, but I just thought I would provide some further insight as to why having no www in the URL would not work.

The reason the www version works while the root domain does not, comes down to how DNS standards define CNAME records. ArcGIS Hub requires a CNAME record that points to hub.arcgis.com. According to the DNS specification (RFC 1034 and RFC 1035), a CNAME record cannot coexist with any other record types at the same name. However, the root domain (example.com) is required by DNS standards to contain SOA and NS records. Because those records must exist, the root domain cannot function as a true CNAME.

Some DNS providers allow what appears to be a CNAME at the root. While it may pass certain DNS checks, it can introduce inconsistencies during domain validation or SSL certificate provisioning.

On the other hand, subdomains such as www.example.com do not have these DNS restrictions. They can host a true, standards-compliant CNAME to hub.arcgis.com. That is why the www configuration works reliably.

For this reason, the recommended setup is to use www.example.com as the CNAME record pointing to hub.arcgis.com. If you would also like the root domain to also work, you can consider setting up a redirect (or domain forwarding) for the root domain to forward to www.example.com.

A good example of domain forwarding can be seen in this GoDaddy example: https://www.godaddy.com/help/forward-my-godaddy-domain-12123

Hopefully this provides more clarity on the issue and can help others seeing the same issue.

Thanks!