It's all good.
I am indeed a newbie. I already told you that this is the very first server I've ever set up. This is precisely how I am learning. Learning by reading and doing.
A lot of our conversation has seemingly gotten lost in translation or something.
Yes, I already tried removing my A record and leaving only the CNAME, which points to the DDNS subdomain (i.e. mine.ddns.net), but this didn't work.
When you say I can't have a full domain point to my dynamic IP, do you mean (1) the CNAME will only work with www.mydomain.com and won't work with mydomain.com or that (2) the website to which the CNAME points must be a subdomain (i.e. mine.ddns.net)??
What I'd like to do is allow my users to use mydomain.com, but when users try to access the server via mydomain.com their browsers automatically assume the HTTP protocol. In other words, when users type in https://mydomain.com it works, but when they just type mydomain.com it doesn't work. I know this is because I chose to deny HTTP requests when I was setting up the server/SSL certificate. I don't want my users to have to type https:// every single time they wish to visit my website.
I know I can achieve this via the vhost redirect, correct? I'm not sure where the vhost file is located, however. But I haven't had a chance yet to do any extensive research regarding this.
Yes, I figured out the the database thing on my own. I asked that question before messing around with anything. I thought I might've needed to explicitly point to the database's actual location on the server in order for the code to interact with the database.
Also, I have already come across many similar snippets, but, again, I'm just not sure which file I'm supposed to be editing :/