If you recently purchased the domain (or just have never pointed your domain to a site), then these instructions should allow you to point your domain to your WordPress Hosting Pro site. Follow these more specific GoDaddy Domain connection Instructions if your DNS records are managed in GoDaddy.
Follow these transfer domain instructions if you are transferring your domain from a previous host.
Part 1: Setting your DNS settings
- Log into your DNS management service (often it is the same company you purchased the domain through).
- Find the screen where DNS Records are managed
- Your bare domain (like example.com) may show as “@” or it might be listed as “example.com” depending on your DNS provider. Make sure it has an “A” Record, and change the value to be 34.149.86.124
- If you have a subdomain (like www.example.com) it may show as “www” or as the full “www.example.com” depending on your DNS provider. It can have an “A” Record like the previous step, or it can be a “CNAME” record with a value of host.websiteprohosting.com
- Make sure all your changes have been saved.
- To encourage the DNS system on the internet to update quickly you can flush Google’s DNS cache using their Google Public DNS Flush Cache tool.
- Allow up to 24 hours for all changes to take full effect. During this time your old host may still be serving your site’s traffic. You can check on the status of your DNS Settings using tools like MxToolbox DNS Lookup or viewing the Domains tab in WordPress Hosting.
Part 2: Configuring your WordPress Hosting Site
- Log into WordPress Hosting Pro and navigate to the Domains tab
- Click Connect a Domain
- Enter the domain name you purchased. Click Add Domain.
- Your domain will show up in the table and it will be marked pending while WordPress Hosting gets ready to handle requests on that domain. This should take a minute.
- When it can handle requests on that domain it might appear disconnected because WordPress Hosting cannot detect the correct DNS records yet. Once your DNS Records have completely propagated through the DNS system they should appear connected.
- It is also normal for your SSL Certificate to be pending at this point. It may take several minutes to obtain an SSL Certificate. If you can’t wait for the SSL Certificate you can expand Advanced Settings and disable Redirect to HTTPS temporarily. It is very important to re-enable this setting because serving traffic on HTTPS is much safer and it improves your site’s ranking in Search Engines.
- Click Make Primary on the domain that you want all your visitors to be redirected to.
- If you disabled Redirect to HTTPS temporarily in step 5 you should check this Domains tab frequently until the SSL Certificate is marked secure. As soon as you can you should enable Redirect to HTTPS.