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I registered a domain name a few days ago and added an ALIAS for the root level, which points to the CNAME on the PA "Web App" page.

I also created a CNAME for WWW that points to the same CNAME address.

The site loads OK without the WWW but sends me to the default "Coming Soon!" page if I try WWW.

Any ideas what might be wrong? My registrar is Dreamhost.

A website on PythonAnywhere will only respond to the exact hostname that is entered at the top of the "Web" page. If you want it to work both with and without www, we recommend that you set it up to work with the www initially -- which, with your existing DNS config, should just require editing the hostname at the top of the "Web" page using the pencil icon to add the www. at the start -- and then setting up a redirect to handle the "naked" domain. This help page explains how to do the second bit.

I added the redirect to Dreamhost but it does not seem to have any effect. Does it normally take some time to propagate?

Yes, it probably will -- in extreme cases, up to 24 hours, but up to an hour or so is quite common. Do you happen to know what the TTL on the previous ALIAS record was? The TTL controls how long old records are cached, so gives a good idea of the kind of time that a propagation will take, as propagation occurs via cache expiries at different DNS servers across the Internet.

It looks like I am set now. Thanks!