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I've set up a vanity URL shortener at caa.to. Using DNSimple for my DNS, browsing to caa.to appropriately lands me at www.caa.to and the associate Pythonanywhere associated site. However, when use a shortened URL such as caa.to/7, I get the error message in the subject. Note that www.caa.to/7 does work as designed. DNS configuration issues? Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

It looks to me like caa.to is not set up at all. From a quick look at the DNSimple site, it looks to me like you'll want to set up a 301 redirect from caa.to to www.caa.to as described here

It worked! Thank you, Glenn.

The reason caa.to was not working last night was because I had attempted to solve the problem by modifying my ALIAS record with a wildcard (*.caa.to) which only exacerbated the issue. Fundamentally, I misunderstood how an ALIAS record worked vs a URL record (301 redirect)which was the root of the problem. I eliminate the ALIAS record (caa.to >> www.caa.to) and replaced with an identical URL record as you suggested. This results in the correct behavior when browsing to the naked root (caa.to) or the root + an argument (caa.to/7).

Cool. The alias feature that DNSimple provides looks like it could be incredibly useful, but it also looks like a great opportunity for shooting yourself in the foot if you're not careful. Glad you got it working in the end.

DNS hosting almost invariably ends up either being so limited as to be almost useless, or powerful enough to give you more than enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot. Mix that up with a service that spans multiple protocol levels (DNS, HTTP) then things get even more fun.

Like a lot of areas of technology, the only real solution is to acquaint oneself with the fundamentals first, but who has time for that? (^_^)

Cartroo: that is the best mixed metaphor I have read in a long, long time

I aim to please (as opposed to aiming at my foot, of course). It actually makes sense if you assume that everyone's using a harpoon gun.

But you'd have to be pretty tall to not have enough rope to harpoon yourself in the foot...