Format domain names in Lightsail
To help people access the website or application, choose a domain name that’s easy to remember. Domain names (and the names of DNS zones, and records) consist of a series of labels separated by periods (.). Naming requirements depend on whether you're registering a domain name or specifying the name of a DNS zone or a record.
Format your domain name according to the following guidelines.
Contents
Format domain names for domain name registration
For domain name registration, your domain name must have 1-255 characters. Valid characters for domain names include (a-z), (A-Z), (0-9), hyphens (-), and periods (.).
You can't use spaces or put a hyphen at the beginning or end of a domain name. Lightsail supports any valid generic top-level domain (TLD) name. For more information, see Generic top-level domains in the Amazon Route 53 Developer Guide.
Format domain names for DNS zones and records
For DNS zones and records, the domain name must have 1-255 characters. Valid characters for domain names include (a-z), (A-Z), (0-9), hyphens (-), and periods (.). You can’t use spaces.
Lightsail stores alphabetic characters as lowercase letters (a-z), even if you specify them as uppercase letters (A-Z).
Lightsail supports DNS zones for both generic and geographic TLDs. For more examples of geographic TLDs, see Geographic top-level domains in the Amazon Route 53 Developer Guide.
Using an asterisk (*) in the names of DNS zones and records
DNS treats the asterisk (*) character as a wildcard character, depending on where the asterisk appears in the name. A wildcard DNS record is a record that answers DNS requests for any subdomain that you haven’t already defined. In Lightsail, you can create DNS zones and records that include the asterisk (*) in the name with the following conditions:
DNS zones
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You can't include an asterisk (*) in the leftmost label in a domain name. For example, you can’t use subdomain.*.example.com.
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If you include the asterisk (*) in other positions, DNS treats it as an ASCII 42 character, not a wildcard. For more information about ASCII characters, see ASCII
in Wikipedia.
DNS Records
Note the following restrictions on using an asterisk (*) as a wildcard in a DNS record name:
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As a wildcard, the asterisk must replace the leftmost label in a domain name, for example, *.example.com or *.acme.example.com. If you include an asterisk in any other position, such as prod.*.example.com, DNS treats it as an ASCII 42 character, not as a wildcard.
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The asterisk must replace the entire label. For example, you can't specify *prod.example.com or prod.*.example.com.
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Specific domain names take precedence. For example, if you create records for *.example.com and acme.example.com, DNS queries for acme.example.com respond with the values in the acme.example.com record.
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The asterisk applies to DNS queries for the subdomain level that includes the asterisk, and all the subdomains of that subdomain. For example, if you create a record named *.example.com, DNS queries for *.example.com will respond to the following:
zenith.example.com
acme.zenith.example.com
pinnacle.acme.zenith.example.com (if there are no records of any type for that DNS zone)
If you create a record named *.example.com and there's no
example.com record, Lightsail responds to DNS queries for
example.com with NXDOMAIN (non-existent
domain).
You can configure Lightsail to return the same response to DNS queries for all subdomains at the same level and also for the domain name. For example, you can configure Lightsail to respond to DNS queries such as acme.example.com and zenith.example.com by using the example.com record. Perform the following steps to route traffic for subdomains to the example.com top-level domain:
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Create a record for the domain, such as example.com.
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Create an alias record for the subdomain, such as *.example.com. Specify the record that you created in the previous step as the target for the alias record.
Next steps
For more information, see the following topics:
