how do i make sure both www.example.com and example.com lead to my home page in Apache2? [duplicate]
Your issue is with DNS. Yes, you should add and simple A record so that the www prefix also resolves to the same ip address as example.com
Example from my local DNS:
;
; BIND data file for smythies.com
;
$TTL 604800
@ IN SOA smythies.com. doug.smythies.com. (
2021031901 ; Serial
604800 ; Refresh
86400 ; Retry
2419200 ; Expire
604800 ) ; Negative Cache TTL
IN A 192.168.111.1
;
@ IN NS ns1.smythies.com.
ns1 IN A 192.168.111.1
www IN A 192.168.111.1
s15 IN A 192.168.111.1
test IN CNAME ns1
mail IN CNAME ns1
Wireless-R IN A 192.168.111.57
dwifi IN A 192.168.111.58
doug-xps IN A 192.168.111.100
...