How To: Host Two Domains on Lion Server - One IP

Question

Here is the situation: I own a new MacMini and have installed Lion Server. All of my updates are current. I have purchased two domains from a reputable “Gddy” source. (I don’t know if I can use there official name). I think I am doing something wrong because I have to type the “www.”mydomain.com to get to my websites. How do I host my two sites?
Here is what I have done so far and have been somewhat successful. For purposes I will refer to my domains in this question as domain1.com and domain2.com. At Gddy my DNS A records for @ both point to my single IP. In addition my www CNAMEs point to @ for both my domains.
My server admin DNS read the following:
Name – 1.168.192.in-addr.arpa / Type – Reverse Zone / Value - Blank
Sub Name – 192.168.1.6 / Type – Reverse Mapping / Value – server.mydomain1.com.
Name – server.mydomain1.com / Type – Primary Zone / Value – Blank
Sub Name – server.mydomain1.com. / Type – Machine / Value – 192.168.1.6
In Lion server I have Web Server turned on and have setup the following web sites:
server.mydomain1.com
www.mydomain2.com
www.mydomain2.com
I am using iWeb and have both websites loading through SFTP successfully.
I am using a SSH certificate I created using my apple ID
Questions:
Why do my customers need to type the www to access my domains?
Do I need to setup another primary zone called server1.mydomain2.com?
Currently everything works fine if you type the www before the domains but I am now on a mission to refine my sites. If users get errors trying to get to my site then they will stop trying and I don't want that. Apple community please help. This stuff really amazes me and the fact that I am somewhat "catching on" is a great feeling. Thank you.

Answer 1

As Belle points out, this has little or nothing to do with DNS. It's all about Apache.
When a request comes in, Apache looks at the hostname of the request to determine which site's configuration to use for that request.
Right now you have two 'sites' configured - 'www.domain1.com' and 'www.domain2.com'.
When a request comes in for, say, http://domain1.com/ Apache does that same lookup, except it doesn't find a match - you don't have any configuration for 'domain1.com', only 'www.domain1.com'. THESE ARE DIFFERENT.
There is absolutely no automatic relationship between a host record (e.g. 'www.domain1.com') and its parent domain (e.g. 'domain1.com'). It makes no difference that you have a DNS CNAME that maps one hostname to another because Apache isn't doing DNS lookups on the incoming requests.
The solution, as indicated, is to tell Apache the list of hostnames that match each site. By telling the 'www.domain1.com' site that it's valid for 'domain1.com' as well (and even 'foo.domain1.com' or 'bar.domain2.com' if you want, too), Apache can serve the request with the appropriate configuration.