How do I set up a redirect so that I can use a CNAME record to point to our Cloud instance
Asked by Daniel Hoeving:

We just moved from on premise Confluence to the cloud and I've been tasked with ensuring our old URL wiki.kerkhofftech.ca works with the new Confluence instance.

Using a CNAME record results in a HTTP 403 error, which probably indicates a webserver configuration issue -- since I don't know that I have access to the underlaying webserver how do I go about setting the instance URL to wiki.kerkhofftech.ca from kerkhoff.atlassian.net?


Answers:
author: Tim Perrault
body: Hi [@Daniel Hoeving](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5270314)

I don't think what you are trying to do is possible with DNS alone. I would actually setup a 301 redirect. You would need access to the load balancer or web server.

comments: author: Daniel Hoeving
body: That's what I'd expected, but not certain how to do that since well, it's Atlassian's server not mine :-)


author: Tim Perrault
body: If you want a custom URL for your instance I believe you need one of the higher plans instead of the standard plan and you need to be in the early access program. I found [this.](https://support.atlassian.com/organization-administration/docs/add-a-custom-domain/)

Without that, the only thing you can do is 301 redirect to kerkhoff.atlassian.net. That way anyone hitting the old link will be redirected to the new site.


author: Daniel Hoeving
body: So according to their support the Early Access Program is just that a Beta channel, and not recommended for production environments -- which this is.

I set up a 301 redirect to point to the Atlassian site, but still running into the load balancer issue -- getting the "Your Atlassian Cloud site is currently unavailable" message, which kind of makes sense since the external 301 isn't much different than a cname record in this instance.


author: Tim Perrault
body: In your browser when you go to wiki.kerkhofftech.ca, you are seeing the url change to kerkhoff.atlassian.net, correct?

Setting up a cname won't really work. Jira relies on the base url, in this case kerkhoff.atlassian.net. So yea you could technically get it to where you see a login page, but it's going to cause havoc with other stuff.

Update\*

Out of curiosity, I entered wiki.kerkhofftech.ca in my browser and it did not redirect


author: Daniel Hoeving
body: So no I'm not seeing the URL change.

I set up the 301 on our Sophos SG:

![Screenshot 2023-07-18 120543.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/269636i15ED7DF91BFA1840/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2023-07-18 120543.png")![Screenshot 2023-07-18 120616.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/269637i196AC720AD6CD5AF/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2023-07-18 120616.png")

I changed the DNS to newwiki.kerkhofftech.ca for the redirect so that our links to the old on premise Confluence wouldn't break before I got this working.


author: Tim Perrault
body: I am guessing here, but the behavior so far points me to this. Do you have a redirect for https to the new site? If you enter newwiki.kerkhofftech.ca into a browser it does redirect, but just to <https://newwiki.kerkhofftech.ca>. Then it just stops. See if you can redirect by setting the source to specifically <https://newwiki.kerkhofftech.ca> to redirect to <https://kerkhofftech.atlassian.net>


author: Daniel Hoeving
body: The redirect is specifically https

![Screenshot 2023-07-19 111028.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/269926i259FC97D69D3C300/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2023-07-19 111028.png")![Screenshot 2023-07-19 111320.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/269927iADA8903BAD905447/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2023-07-19 111320.png")


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud