I set my domain up to use "www" as a CNAME to a static-file web service and the apex domain as a redirector to that "www" site. Done it before, works great!
But then it didn't work so well. The "www" site was working fine exactly as I wanted, but that apex domain redirect wasn't working. I kept getting a connection-refused error. Huh?
Worked through the possibilities, I finally found the problem. Namecheap's redirector service was only running on port 80. For my dot-com, that was no problem, but my dot-dev domain, like all dot-dev, are flagged as TLS only. My browser was refusing to connect to port 80!
I'm now looking at possibilities for an alternate redirect-to-www service that works over TLS.
Any suggestions for my next move please?