Starter, CMS, Business Plan (legacy Basic, Pro) members may choose to publish their sites to a custom domain, instead of a Studio subdomain.
💡 What is the difference between a custom domain, and a Studio subdomain? |
There are five steps to publish to a custom domain.
Step 1: Input domain
When you hit Publish, you will be prompted to type in your domain.
Types of domains that you can use list details on domains Studio support.
💡If you do not have a domain yet, you can easily purchase one through domain registrars such as Google Domains, GoDaddy, or others. |
💡All Studio plans include hosting. At the moment, we do not support hosting of projects in personal servers. |
Step 2: Update A records (outside Studio)
Once you type in your domain, you will see Studio’s A record displayed (A 34.111.141.225).
💡What is an A record A record, short for Address Record, is the IP address of the host where your files are located. In your case, it will be Studio. The domain registrar must know your files are hosted with Studio, in order to point visitors to the right connection. |
Copy and paste this A record to your domain registrar’s “Modify A records” page. When you are done, click Next.
💡If you are using Squarespace Domains |
💡If you are using GoDaddy 1. Log into your GoDaddy Domain Control Center 2. Locate your domain under the Domain Settings page 3. Select Manage DNS under Additional Settings 4. Select Add 5. Select A under type, then under “Points to,” paste in Studio’s A record |
Tip: Plan in advance
For the A record registration to take effect, it may take a couple of hours or longer. If there is a particular date you want your site to go live, we recommend registering your A record on Studio at least two days before.
In the case you have previously connected the same domain to another service, you may experience a longer wait time. We recommend reducing the “TTL” (time-to-live) for the previous A record through your domain registry.
Step 3: Initiate connection
After clicking Next in the previous step, Studio will attempt to connect to your domain.
If there is an error popup, please follow the instructions based on the particular error.
If there is not an error popup, yet is still unable to connect, it is likely that the A record registration is still taking place. You may close this panel and check back in later.
Step 4: Confirm completion
A TLS certificate will be automatically issued now, and again automatically after 60 days.
💡 What is a TLS certificate It is a digital certificate for establishing an encrypted connection between the site visitor’s computer, and the web server where the site is hosted on. Maintaining a secure data exchange provides peace-of-mind to site visitors. |
You will see a confirmation of completion afterwards.
If in the rare case you cannot visit your site, troubleshoot here.
Step 5: Publishing your site
Once you have completed all settings and are ready to go live, click the "Publish" button found on the publishing panel.
Important Notes:
If your site still shows a 404 error even after the certificate has been issued, please click the "Update" button on the publishing panel to resolve this.
Even if your site was already published under a Studio subdomain, switching to a custom domain will initially set your site to an unpublished state (showing a Studio 404 error). Once you're ready to go live, simply click the "Update" button on the publishing panel.
Tip: Public/Private settings
Page visibility settings are carried over from before publishing. If you have set certain pages as Private, rest assured they will not automatically go private. When you are ready for such pages to go public, make changes accordingly in the Page settings panel.