When you move a website that's currently published on another service or server over to Studio.Design while keeping your custom domain, there will always be a short period when your site can't be accessed (downtime). This happens because of DNS setting changes and SSL certificate issuance.
This article explains why downtime happens, how to check the status of your changes, and what to do if the switch is taking longer than expected.
Why downtime happens
The site switchover usually follows the steps below. Steps 1 through 4 are when your site will be inaccessible — this downtime is unavoidable.
On the DNS side, update your custom domain's record settings to point to Studio.Design's IP address.
Note: Be sure to remove any AAAA or CAA records.
Once the updated record settings have propagated and can be looked up externally, connect your custom domain in the Publish panel of your Studio.Design project.
Your SSL certificate will be issued within a few hours.
Click "Publish" (or "Update") in the Publish panel to make your site live.
How to check the status of your changes
You can check the propagation status of your DNS records using an external tool like DNS Checker - DNS Check Propagation Tool.
Issuing a Studio.Design TLS certificate requires successful domain resolution across multiple regions. If some regions show errors in the tool above, certificate issuance may fail and retries can take longer.
What to do if the switch isn't complete after 30 minutes
If your DNS settings are correct, your custom domain connection should usually finish within a few dozen minutes. If it's been more than 30 minutes since you started and the connection still isn't complete, try the following:
Check the propagation status of your DNS settings using an external tool like DNS Checker - DNS Check Propagation Tool.
Disconnect your custom domain once, then reconnect it.
For more details, see About TLS certificate issuance.
If your DNS settings are correct and reconnecting still doesn't resolve the issue, our team can manually issue the certificate for you. After logging in to Studio.Design, reach out to us through "Contact us by chat" at the bottom right of the screen.