"vim.org" fails to redirect to "www.vim.org" for Chrome users

[Andrew Pennebaker]

When I enter "vim.org" into the address bar in Firefox, it successfully redirects to "www.vim.org". But when I enter "vim.org" in Chrome, no redirect happens. Maybe check the Apache config?

Observed with Google Chrome 36 in Mac OS X and Ubuntu.

[Markus Osterhoff]

* Andrew Pennebaker <andrew.p...@gmail.com> [140819 23:24]:

> When I enter "vim.org" into the address bar in Firefox, it
> successfully redirects to "www.vim.org". But when I enter "vim.org" in
> Chrome, no redirect happens. Maybe check the Apache config?

From what I see (dig vim.org vs. dig www.vim.org), vim.org does not hold
an A record, and it is Firefox, that just tries another URL. So it would
be the dns zone file that needs care, if this behaviour is wanted.

> Observed with Google Chrome 36 in Mac OS X and Ubuntu.

Greetings,
Markus

[John Beckett]

Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
> When I enter "vim.org" into the address bar in Firefox, it
> successfully redirects to "www.vim.org". But when I enter
> "vim.org" in Chrome, no redirect happens.

That has been discussed a couple of times in the past. The
person who provides the DNS for Vim does so in an extremely
reliable and efficient manner, so what they say goes. The issue
is that vim.org is a domain and should not be expected to work
in a browser. A browser has to connect to a host (www.vim.org).

Some browsers try adding "www." when plain "vim.org" does not
resolve to a host name, so vim.org works in some browsers.

John

[Andrew Pennebaker]

Could we please setup a basic Apache redirection, so that users trying to get to vim.org will be successfully redirected to www.vim.org?

This procedure is commonly used by many websites, and it helps a lot of users get to the home page more easily--they shouldn't have to see 404 for the domain!

An example Apache configuration that would quickly accomplish this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1157255/how-to-redirect-non-www-to-www-urls-using-htaccess/11990168#11990168

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Cheers,

Andrew Pennebaker

www.yellosoft.us

[Павлов Николай Александрович]

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AFAIK vim.org is hosted on sourceforge and there is no access to web server settings.

This question was already raised before here or in vim-dev and relevant topic contained an explanation why with the current hosting it is not possible to do what you request. I did not save a link though.
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[Benjamin R. Haskell]

This issue has been raised and rejected (stubbornly and misguidedly, IMO) multiple times in the past:

A recent summary:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/tyTTlowNg5s/s2xV8GixE2oJ

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[Andrew Pennebaker]

If we can't control htaccess settings, we can still add an index.html file that redirects to www.vim.org.

Example:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/5411567/350106

Given that vim.org is hosted on SourceForge, we could even redirect to the SourceForge project page. That would still be better than 404'ing.

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Andrew Pennebaker
<andrew.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If we can't control htaccess settings, we can still add an index.html file that redirects to www.vim.org.
>
> Example:
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/a/5411567/350106

Without a DNS A record pointing to *something*, there's no way to
serve anything for `vim.org` without client-side modifications.

> Given that vim.org is hosted on SourceForge, we could even redirect to the SourceForge project page. That would still be better than 404'ing.

I haven't checked, but presumably SourceForge's hosting has the same
issue as Heroku at this point with hosting apex domains (i.e. there's
probably not a stable IP or set of IPs to point to¹, and you can't
CNAME an apex domain²).

I forgot that I did this last time the issue came up (three years ago,
uggh), but I still have a redirector set up and ready to go. Point
`vim.org` to 64.130.10.15 and it'll work. There's nothing to say an
apex domain has to be hosted at the same server as `www`.

e.g.

```
$ curl --resolve vim.org:80:64.130.10.15 -i
'http://vim.org/whatever?with-params'
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 20:08:37 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.27
Location: http://www.vim.org/whatever?with-params
Content-Length: 247
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a
href="http://www.vim.org/whatever?with-params">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>
```

--
Best,
Ben

¹: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains - can't use A
records for apex domains on Heroku
²: http://blog.dnsimple.com/2011/11/introducing-alias-record/ - why
ALIAS/ANAME records were created
https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169056-Does-CloudFlare-support-CNAME-APEX-at-the-root-
- CloudFlare handles apex CNAMEs (in opposition to RFCs)

[Andrew Pennebaker]

I still have a redirector set up and ready to go.  Point
`vim.org` to 64.130.10.15 and it'll work.  There's nothing to say an
apex domain has to be hosted at the same server as `www`.

Good solution!

By the way, from my machine that IP seems to be acting like a pairLite ISP parking site. Maybe my DNS cache is old?

[Bart Schouten]

Incidentally, if I may be allowed to chime in...

My own host doesn't allow for a 301 "moved" but it does offer a 302 "redirect" and it works flawlessly.

Here is a good read on it though:

http://www.greenhills.co.uk/2011/06/12/www-or-bare-domain.html

Personally (at least for my own purposes) I feel the bare domain is a matter of convenience, but I prefer to use a full domain (as in, the www prefix) as the canonical url.

When I access my own website, I do not type the "www" I just start with the domain and that autocompletes. Ever since "autocompletion" so to speak I have not really been using any bookmarks for anything regular ;-).

Regards, and good luck with this (I think you should have this redirect, I agree with that) and I hope it can work out.



Andrew Pennebaker schreef op 20-8-2014 om 22:32:

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[Benjamin R. Haskell]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Andrew Pennebaker
<andrew.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I still have a redirector set up and ready to go. Point
>> `vim.org` to 64.130.10.15 and it'll work. There's nothing to say an
>> apex domain has to be hosted at the same server as `www`.
>
>
> Good solution!
>
> By the way, from my machine that IP seems to be acting like a pairLite ISP
> parking site. Maybe my DNS cache is old?

If you access it by IP, yes, that's what it should serve. It's
name-based virtual hosting, as (virtually?) everything is these days,
so the default page is the hosting provider's site.

As another example, accessing
http://raptorize-rails-demo.herokuapp.com/ (a Heroku app of mine)
works fine, but navigating directly to the IP to which it resolves
(from here: http://23.21.169.234/ ) returns a "No such app" page.

--
Best,
Ben