Connecting a domain is two ideas and about ten minutes of work. It feels harder than it is because the vocabulary is bad and because nothing appears to happen for a while afterwards.
Registrar and host are different things
The registrar is where you bought the domain and where the renewal is charged. The host is the machine serving the site. They are unrelated, and your domain should stay in your own registrar account no matter who builds the site.
If anyone asks you to transfer the domain into their account, ask why. Keeping it means you can point it elsewhere at any time, which is the whole value of owning it.
The two records you will be asked for
Most hosts will give you exactly one of these to add. Add what they specify and change nothing else, particularly not the MX records, which carry your email.
- An A record points a bare domain, like example.com, at an IP address.
- A CNAME points a subdomain, like www.example.com, at another hostname.
- Nameserver changes hand the whole domain over to another provider’s DNS. Faster to set up, but it moves every record including email.
Why nothing happens for a while
DNS answers are cached at every step between your browser and the registry, for a period the record itself declares. Until that expires, some people see the old site and some see the new one, which is normal and not a mistake you made.
Lower the TTL to 300 seconds a day before you plan to move, and the switch happens in minutes instead of hours.
Moving a live site without downtime
- A day before, lower the TTL on the records you will change.
- Have the new site fully working on a temporary address first.
- Add the domain to the new host and let it issue a certificate before switching.
- Change the record, then check from a phone on mobile data, which uses different resolvers.
- Leave the old host running for a day or two.
The certificate step
HTTPS needs a certificate issued for your specific domain, and it can normally only be issued once the domain points at the host. That is why a new domain sometimes shows a security warning for a few minutes. It resolves itself, and it should never last more than an hour.
What we do
You keep the domain in your own account and send us one record to add, or add it yourself if you prefer. We handle the certificate and the renewal of it. Moving away later means changing one record back.
Common questions
- Should the site be at example.com or www.example.com?
- Either, as long as one redirects to the other so there is a single canonical address. Search engines treat them as different sites otherwise.
- Will changing DNS break my email?
- Only if you change the MX records or move nameservers without copying them across. Adding or changing an A record or a CNAME for the website does not touch email.
- How long does propagation really take?
- Usually minutes, occasionally a few hours, and up to 48 in the worst case if the previous TTL was long. Lowering the TTL beforehand is what avoids the long version.