CNAME records
From JustHumans
In DNS, a CNAME record is a stand-in for another name. In a sense, it translates one name into another.
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Why do I care about this?
Some overly conservative browsers such as Apple's Safari won't show JustHumans.com images correctly if the images don't come from your domain. CNAME records are a way of saying JustHumans.com is allowed to show images on your website. Read more about cross site cookie permissions.
What is DNS?
DNS stands for Domain Name System. On the Internet, computers are known by a unique number called their IP address. For example:
72.14.207.99
For humans, this is cumbersome at best. Humans use names such as:
www.google.com
The Domain Name System is used to translate names into numbers (www.google.com = 72.14.207.99) and numbers into names. (72.14.207.99 = www.google.com)
What is a CNAME Record?
A CNAME record is a special type of DNS record that instead of mapping a name like verify.example.com to an IP address like 1.2.3.4, it maps to another name like verify.JustHumans.com. This way, if JustHumans.com wants to change the underlying IP address for verify.JustHumans.com, they don't have to call each person running JustHumans.com code and have them change their DNS. Justhumans.com just changes the IP address that verify.JustHumans.com resolves to and all the CNAMEs out there just work. verify.example.com continues to point to verify.JustHumans.com which points to the new IP address 2.3.4.5.
How do I set up a CNAME Record
How you actually create a CNAME record depends on how your DNS is hosted. You either need to go to the people that host your DNS and ask them to create a new CNAME record for you, or you need to login to your domain name tools and create one yourself. Either way, you want to create a new CNAME record typically called verify.your-company.com and point it to verify.JustHumans.com. Of course you would replace your-company.com with your actual domain name.
