How to activate a custom domain name for DNS Providers with ALIAS Records
If your DNS provider allows you to add ALIAS records for a domain name, the process of activating a custom domain, which is not a subdomain, is divided into 4 simple steps:
- Choose your custom domain
- Activate your free SSL certificate
- Activate your domain
- Test your custom domain
Step 1: Choose Your Custom Domain
Login to your dashboard and click Admin => on your left-hand side, click the drop-down for Settings => Click Domain name => Request Custom Domain.
Paste the custom domain you would like to make use of. Confirm that you already own the domain name and click Start Activation.
Step 2: Activate Your Free SSL Certificate
On the next page, some CNAME records would be provided for you:
Login to your domain registrar's DNS Manager to input the CNAME records to verify your ownership of the domain name. While inputting the CNAME records, make use of 60 seconds or 1 minute as the TTL.
Note that you will not add all the records; instead, you will stop before the dot that separates your domain name from the string of letters and numbers.
This is because you are adding the records in the domain name's DNS manager and the system already recognizes it. Adding it again would render the records redundant.
After the records have been added, wait for a few minutes, before going to your website to click the “check certificate” button.
Step 3: Activate your website
After checking the certificate, a page with a new ALIAS record would open up.
Repeat step 2 and add the ALIAS record in your DNS manager. In this case, you will be replacing the subdomain with "@" in your DNS Manager.
After the record has been added, wait for a few minutes before going to your website to click the “check website” button.
If the ALIAS records have successfully propagated, a new page would open to tell you that your custom domain has been successfully activated.
Step 5: Test your custom domain
Afterward, you can load your custom domain on the browser, and it will load securely.
And with this, you have activated your custom domain with a registered domain name.
Congratulations. 😉