Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig theacademyforums.com. NS
Answer
theacademyforums.com. 5 NS ns-1662.awsdns-15.co.uk.
theacademyforums.com. 5 NS ns-231.awsdns-28.com.
theacademyforums.com. 5 NS ns-351.awsdns-43.com.
theacademyforums.com. 5 NS ns-1323.awsdns-37.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0