Custom domains

Any published site can serve on your own domain. There are two situations, and the wizard handles both:

• A new or unused domain — nothing is live on it today. This is the quick path: add one DNS record and wait for it to go green.
• A domain that is live somewhere else — you’re migrating an existing site to Hoversite. Use the certificate-first migration flow so your visitors never see an error.

Connecting a new domain

1. In your site’s Hosting panel, choose Add domain and enter your domain. Adding both www.example.com and the bare example.com gives visitors both addresses — see canonical domain — but whether the bare version works depends on your DNS provider, so read root domains first.
2. The wizard shows you the DNS record to add at your registrar — usually a single CNAME.
3. Add the record at your registrar and leave the Hosting page open. It checks your DNS every few seconds and flips the domain to Live on its own. Most domains go live within minutes; DNS propagation can occasionally take up to an hour.

Your HTTPS certificate is issued automatically — there is nothing to buy, upload, or renew.

Migrating a live domain (zero downtime)

If your domain currently serves a website, don’t change DNS first. The order that avoids downtime is: get the certificate ready, then flip DNS.

1. Prepare (24–48 hours before, optional but recommended): at your registrar, lower the TTL on the records you’ll change to 60–300 seconds. This makes the eventual switch propagate in minutes instead of hours.

2. In the wizard, use the “Get the certificate first” flow. It gives you one CNAME record to add, named _acme-challenge.yourdomain.com. This lets us prove the domain is yours and issue the certificate without touching where your domain points, so your current site keeps serving normally. Add it alongside your existing records — it replaces nothing.

   Leave that record in place permanently. It also covers every future certificate renewal, so you never have to think about certificates again.

   If your DNS provider won’t let you add a CNAME at that name, the wizard offers TXT values as a fallback — use those instead. They work for this issuance, but unlike the CNAME they don’t cover future renewals.

3. Wait for the wizard to show the certificate is ready. Your existing site is still serving normally.

4. Now make the DNS switch shown in the wizard (replace your existing record with ours). Because the certificate already exists, the moment DNS propagates visitors get your Hoversite site over valid HTTPS — no certificate-error window.

Root domains (example.com without the www)

Short version: www.example.com works everywhere. The bare example.com works on most modern DNS providers, but not all of them — and if yours is one of the exceptions, moving your DNS is free and takes about fifteen minutes.

Why the root domain is different

Your DNS zone has one special name: the root, written @ in most control panels. The rules of DNS don’t allow the root to hold a CNAME record — the one record type we use to connect a domain. That’s a limitation of DNS itself, not of Hoversite or of your provider.

Most DNS providers work around it with a feature that answers for the root as if it held a CNAME. Different companies give it different names — CNAME flattening, ALIAS, or ANAME — but they all do the same thing, and where it exists, connecting a root domain just works.

Does your provider support it?

The quickest answer is to try. Add the CNAME the wizard shows you at the root (@) of your zone. If your provider saves it, you’re done. If it refuses — usually with a message like “CNAME records are not allowed at the apex” — then it doesn’t support flattening, and you have two options below.

Providers we know handle root domains today include Cloudflare (CNAME flattening), Amazon Route 53, DNSimple, Namecheap, Porkbun, DNS Made Easy, and NS1. Many DNS panels bundled free with a registrar or a shared-hosting plan do not.

Option 1 — move your DNS (recommended)

The cleanest fix is to move your domain’s DNS to a provider that supports root domains. Cloudflare’s free plan is the usual choice and costs nothing.

This is not transferring your domain. You keep your current registrar and keep renewing with them. All you change is which nameservers answer questions about your domain — a two-line setting at your registrar. It normally takes effect within an hour.

Move your other records first

Your DNS zone holds more than your website. It also holds the records that deliver your email (MX) and the ones that stop your outgoing mail being marked as spam (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).

Changing nameservers moves all of it at once. If those records aren’t recreated at the new provider before the switch takes effect, your email stops arriving.

Cloudflare and most providers scan your existing records and import them automatically when you add the domain — but check the imported list against your old provider before you change nameservers, and pay particular attention to anything mail-related. If you’re unsure, ask whoever set up your email.

Option 2 — use www and redirect the root

If you’d rather not move your DNS, connect www.example.com only, and set your registrar’s domain forwarding (sometimes called URL forwarding or web forwarding) to send example.com to https://www.example.com. Most registrars offer this even when they don’t support ALIAS records.

Visitors who type the bare domain land on your site either way. The trade-off is that your canonical address becomes the www version, and the redirect is handled by your registrar rather than by us — so if it misbehaves, that’s where to look.

What the statuses mean

Status	What it means	What to do
Issuing your HTTPS certificate…	We’re provisioning the certificate.	Nothing — usually under a couple of minutes.
Certificate ready — waiting on your DNS	Everything on our side is done.	Add (or switch) the DNS record at your registrar. This is the only step left.
DNS found — finishing activation…	We can see your DNS change and are activating.	Nothing — moments away.
Live ✓	Your domain is serving your site over HTTPS.	Celebrate. If you still see the old site, that’s your local DNS cache — see troubleshooting.
Blocked	Something specific is in the way — the wizard names it.	Follow the fix it shows, then it continues automatically. See troubleshooting for the common blockers.

A domain sitting in “waiting on your DNS” is not stuck — it’s waiting for a change only you can make at your registrar.

Canonical domain

When both example.com and www.example.com are live, pick one as the main address in the Domains card; the other permanently redirects to it (an HTTP 308). One canonical address avoids SEO penalties from duplicate content and keeps analytics in one place.