Help center › For organizations › Community website › Use your own domain

Use your own domain

Point your own web address at your Kannect site, with the exact DNS records and the answers for the usual registrars.

Applies toDashboardWebsite

Discover Website → Domain Settings lets you "Connect your own domain so your community website appears directly on your branded URL."

Steps

  1. Choose Discover Website, then Domain Settings.
  2. Type your domain into Custom Domain. Kannect's advice: "Use a subdomain like community.yourorg.com for the simplest setup. Root domains (yourorg.com) are supported too."
  3. Choose Save Changes. The DNS records you need appear below.
  4. Add those records at your domain provider.
  5. Come back and choose Verify Connection.

The records

Under DNS Configuration, Kannect shows the exact records for your domain, as a table of Type, Host, Value and TTL. For a root domain that is three records: one CNAME on www pointing at Kannect, and two A records on the root.

Kannect explains why, in its own words: "The CNAME points www.yourdomain at your Kannect site. The two A records catch anyone who types yourdomain without the www and forward them to the www version automatically."

And the reassuring part: "Add all three records above, you don't need to change anything else, and your email keeps working exactly as it does now."

Registrar quirks

Kannect names the ones that catch people out:

  • Wix: "Leave the Host field blank instead of typing @. If you see 'hostname already in use,' delete the existing www record first, Wix adds one automatically."
  • GoDaddy, Namecheap and Cloudflare: "enter the records exactly as shown."

"Changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate."

What Kannect does while you wait

Two cards sit above the records and update themselves:

  • SSL Certificate, which says Provisioning… while Kannect gets your certificate. "This can take a few minutes. You can leave this page open."
  • DNS Verification, which says Checking…. "We're checking your DNS automatically every few seconds."

If your domain goes offline later

The page tells you rather than leaving you to find out: "Your custom domain is currently offline. Its SSL certificate is no longer valid, so the domain can't load. Your website is still live at your Kannect address. To bring the custom domain back, re-check your DNS records below and click Verify."

So a broken custom domain never takes your site down. It falls back to the Kannect address until you fix it.