Add an External Domain

If you have a domain that is managed in GoDaddy or another registrar and would like to point it to a Siteglide website you can use our External Domain feature. This means that you can continue to manage your DNS through GoDaddy/other registrar.

If your site is hosted on our OCI servers (Oracle+Cloudflare)

If your site is on one of our new OCI (Oracle+Cloudflare) stacks the UI will look slightly different, you will be able to add both CNAMEs at the same time.

Standard Setup: Enable WWW Redirect (e.g. https://www.example.com)

Most websites use www and redirect non-www traffic to www.

Step 1: Add the domain

Simply select External, type in the root domain (without www) and then select 'Use as default domain' and 'Enable WWW redirect':

Step 2: Add the records

Simply add the following records in your DNS control panel:

Step 3: Redirect the root to www

Does your DNS provider support a "flattened" CNAME (sometimes called ANAME, CNAME flattening, or ALIAS) on the root/apex?

1. If YES you can add the following records:

1. If NO you must redirect traffic to www and you will need to use an external service such as redirect.pizza to handle the root redirection to www:

Alternative Setup: Redirect all traffic to the root (e.g. https://example.com)

Step 1: Add the domain

Simply select External, type in the root domain (without www) and then select 'Use as default domain' and not NOT select 'Enable WWW redirect':

Step 2: Add the records

Simply add the following records in your DNS control panel:

Subdomain Setup

Step 1: Add the subdomain

Simply type in the subdomain and ensure you do not select Enable WWW redirect:

Step 2: Add the records

If your site is hosted on our AWS servers

If using AWS please follow the steps below, contact us if you're unsure which stack you are on.

Step 1: Add a Domain

Navigate to the Domains tab on the Site and click Add Domain:

Step 2: Choose External

Step 3: Enter Domain Details

Type in the root domain without www and you'll likely want to set it as the Default Domain and Enable WWW Redirect. Then click Add Domain:

Step 4: Add SSL Verification CNAME

Once your domain has finished creating in the system, it's status will change to "Ownership Verification Pending" which means it is now ready.

Add the generated CNAME record to in your DNS control panel to verify ownership, generate an SSL certificate and automatically apply it to your site during the next step.

GoDaddy example:

Once you have saved the record in your registrar, allow some time for propagation, check back and refresh the page.

Step 5: Add WWW CNAME Record

Once the verification CNAME record has propagated the WWW CNAME Record needs to be added in your DNS Control Panel (GoDaddy example):

The site will now be live via WWW (https://www.domain.com) but not via the root domain (https://domain.com). Complete Step 5 to fully setup the domain correctly. The domain should show as 'Live' under the Status column in Siteglide:

Forward the Root/@ to the www (with SSL)

Most DNS Control Panels cannot correctly redirect the root traffic to the WWW over SSL so we recommend using an external service called Redirect.Pizza.

Just follow these steps to redirect your non-www to the www variant. The non-www is also sometimes called naked record or "apex" (screenshots below):

1. Create a redirect.pizza account.

2. Add your source. This should be the domain without www. For instance, enter example.com as your source.

3. Set the destination to the variant with www. Example: www.example.com

4. Press "Create redirect"

5. The required DNS change pops up. Go to your domain registrar to make this DNS change for the A record. This record may already exists '@'. Press 'edit' to edit it to the required DNS setting for redirect.pizza. For more info, see What are these DNS changes?

6. The DNS change is made! It may take up to 24 hours before the DNS is fully propagated.

These Steps can also be found here: https://redirect.pizza/support/redirecting-non-www-to-www