Why can www.example.com be different than example.com?

Question

My website can be reached at www.fonix-energia.hu and at fonix-energia.hu. In the first case, the website appears to be fallen apart, while without the www it works perfectly. There is only one single copy of the site in the /var/www/fonix folder. There should be no alternate versions on the server at all.

Here is my DNS configuration: the two addresses should point to the same place:

 Name TTL Class Type Record fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 95.85.47.115 localhost.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 127.0.0.1 mail.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN CNAME ghs.googlehosted.com ftp.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 cpanel.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 webdisk.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 whm.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 webmail.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 autoconfig.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 autodiscover.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 195.56.100.77 fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN TXT google-ite-verification=[CENSORED] www.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN CNAME fonix-energia.hu 

Here is the apache2 configuration. Here too I thought that the virtualhost configuration points to the same location:

<VirtualHost *:80> # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless. # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly. #ServerName www.example.com ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot /var/www # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn, # error, crit, alert, emerg. # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular # modules, e.g. #LogLevel info ssl:warn ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf". #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot /var/www/fonix ServerName fonix-energia.hu # Other directives here </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot /var/www/fonix ServerName www.fonix-energia.hu # Other directives here </VirtualHost> 

Answer 1

Take out the second VirtualHost, it should be just one with www. as an alias:

<VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot /var/www/fonix ServerName fonix-energia.hu ServerAlias www.fonix-energia.hu # Other directives here </VirtualHost> 

Answer 2

Although its not the cause of your problem just an FYI, you don't need to be using a CNAME for the www instead use an A record just like you did for fonix-energia.hu. Another nitpick of mine is you don't have to use FQDN in your records.

So instead of:

fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 95.85.47.115 

You can use:

@ 14400 IN A 95.85.47.115 

Instead of the CNAME:

www.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN CNAME fonix-energia.hu 

You can use:

www 14400 IN A 95.85.47.115 

Or:

www.fonix-energia.hu. 14400 IN A 95.85.47.115