Direct your custom domain to Webflow and connect it to your Webflow site.
Note: We’re transitioning to Workspaces, and are in the process of updating our content. Visit the Workspaces blog post to read more about these updates and changes, or visit our updated lesson on how to connect a custom domain. You can also learn how to check if your account is on Workspaces.
Besides publishing your site to yoursite.webflow.io, you can also publish your site to any custom domain you own (yourdomain.com) once you add a site plan to your site.
In this lesson:
Important: Domains can take anywhere from 24-48 hours to populate and sometimes up to 72 hours depending on your provider. Some providers like GoDaddy and Google Domains can populate their DNS as quickly as 15 min to 1 hour.
Before you get started with this tutorial, make sure you:
To add your custom domain(s) to your Webflow site, open the Site settings of that specific site and go to the Hosting tab. In the Custom domain section, add your root domain (yourdomain.com) under Add existing domain. This will add both the root domain (yourdomain.com) and the full domain (www.yourdomain.com).
Webflow supports Internationalized Domain Names and domains with special characters (e.g., ä, ê, ó). However, when adding your custom domain to your site, it should be in Punycode format. (You can use a tool like Verisign to convert your domain to Punycode, though keep in mind that it doesn’t always work.)
Access your domain's DNS settings in your domain registrar's or DNS host's dashboard.
Every DNS host has their own way of updating DNS settings. We recommend that you read the help documentation of your DNS host, also do not hesitate to contact their support for help with their interface and settings.
Check this list of registrars and links to their DNS setting documentation.
Add another A record for host @ with the value of the second A record in your Webflow dashboard.
To improve site load performance and fix redirect issues, we’ve set up a new hosting network with improved redirect behavior which uses new A records. As a result, we’re asking everyone with websites hosted on custom domains to update their A records in their domain name service (DNS) provider by April 30th, 2021.
Go to your site(s) using custom domains, copy the updated A records shown in your site’s settings, and update your DNS settings in your domain registrar's or DNS host's dashboard.
These new A records are:
Some DNS hosting services prefer that you set the root domain (yourdomain.com) as the host instead of @. We recommend that you check the "Adding an A record" documentation of your DNS host. Check Updating DNS settings to find a list of registrars and links to their DNS setting documentation.
Some DNS hosting services prefer that you set the full domain (www.yourdomain.com) as the host instead of www. We recommend that you check the "Adding a CNAME record" documentation of your DNS host. Check Updating DNS settings to find a list of registrars and links to their DNS setting documentation.
If you've connected more than one domain, you'll need to set a default domain to redirect all traffic from the other domains to this default one. This is super helpful to avoid SEO issues due to duplicate content. To do that, go back to the Custom domain section of your site’s Hosting settings and click make default next to the domain you want to set as the default domain.
To verify that your DNS settings are correct, and that your domain is correctly pointing to Webflow, check the status of each domain name in your DNS settings.
DNS changes can take a few minutes to propagate — or even longer if it’s a new domain. If your site verification doesn’t work right away, you can come back later to check the status again. If you still run into any issues with your domain verification, reach out to your DNS provider to make sure the records are set correctly.
The final step is to publish your website. You should see your new custom domain in the publish dialog, make sure to select it before hitting publish.
Learn more about: Publishing your project
Important: Domains can take anywhere from 24-48 hours to populate and sometimes up to 72 hours depending on your provider. Some providers like GoDaddy and Google Domains can populate their DNS as quickly as 15 min to 1 hour.
If your domain is not working correctly after 48 hours, troubleshoot your DNS settings or contact your domain provider’s help desk.
If your DNS settings are correct, but you’re still experiencing issues with your published site, contact us and we’ll help you resolve any issues.
You can add as many domains and subdomains as you want. This is a good way to redirect your old domains to the new subdomain. Just make sure to set a default domain to ensure that all domains connected to this site are redirected to that URL. This is necessary to avoid being penalized by Google for having duplicate content on the web.
The entire site will be published to all domains and subdomains connected to that site. If you've set a default domain, the site will be published to that domain and all other domains will be redirected to the default URL.
It's not possible to publish specific pages to specific domains or subdomains. If you need to publish different pages to different subdomains, you'll need to set up separate sites for each page. Then, you'll add a separate site plan to each site and add the specific custom domain(s) or subdomain(s) to each site.
SSL is enabled by default for sites created after 14 November 2018. If your site was created before that date, make sure to enable SSL under project settings > hosting > Advanced publishing options and save the changes.
You can switch SSL off, however note that sites that don't use SSL may be labeled "not secure" by some browsers, strongly discouraging people from visiting your site.
If you disable SSL on sites using Ecommerce, checkout will be disabled and your online store will not function. The add to cart button as well as other Ecommerce elements will stop working as well.
Important: Each time you disable or enable SSL on a Webflow-hosted site, you'll need to update your DNS settings. After you update the SSL setting, follow the steps below to update the DNS and ensure that your site works correctly.
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