My domain gives 301 moved permanently, eventually loads or doesn't load my Apache server - apache

Question

I have an Apache server, where the root website directory is located at /var/www/html/. I have a domain I purchased on GoDaddy that contains an # A record which points to my home IP Address where my server is located. On the server end, I have a private folder inside my website directory protected correctly with a username and password, as you'll see in my server configuration. I noticed that when I go to my domain with Chrome, sometimes it will load instantly, and other times (according to the Google Chrome Developer Network Console) I will keep getting a "301 Moved Permanently" status code from my server. Is there something I am overlooking?
My website conf file (replaced with example.com for temporary privacy):
<VirtualHost *:80>
# The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
# the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
# redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
# specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
# match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
# value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
# However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
ServerName www.example.com
ServerAlias example.com
ServerAdmin example#example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
<Directory "/var/www/html/private">
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Content"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Directory>
# Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
# error, crit, alert, emerg.
# It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
# modules, e.g.
#LogLevel info ssl:warn
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
# For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
# after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>
# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet
And here is the .htaccess file located at the root of my website, which might help:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Answer 1

I finally found a working solution. It wasn't the server's fault, it was the way I set up GoDaddy. Inside your domain's DNS settings, have the server permanently redirect to your public IP address. Ensure it is a masked redirection so that your domain stays in the web address bar.