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How to point a domain to your website (A, CNAME and nameservers)

You have a domain and you have hosting. The last step is telling the internet where your site actually lives. There are two ways to do it, and picking the right one saves you a lot of confusion later.

Option 1: Point with an A record (keep your DNS where it is)

An A record maps your domain to the IP address of your web server. This is the simplest option when you want to keep managing DNS at your current provider.

  • Find the IP address your host gave you (often in the welcome email).

  • At your DNS provider, create an A record for @ (the bare domain) pointing to that IP.

  • Create a CNAME for www pointing to @ (or an A record to the same IP).

  • Wait for the TTL to expire, then check with a DNS lookup tool.

text
@     A      203.0.113.10
www   CNAME  @

Option 2: Use your host's nameservers (delegate everything)

Instead of individual records, you hand DNS control to your host by changing the domain's nameservers to theirs (for example ns1.yourhost.com). They then manage the records for you — convenient if you buy the domain and hosting together.

Which should you choose?

  • Keep DNS elsewhere if you already have email, subdomains or other records you manage there.

  • Delegate to your host's nameservers if you want one place to manage everything.

  • Never run two DNS providers at once for the same records — pick one source of truth.

Verify it worked

Confirm the A record resolves to the IP you set, then load the site over https:// and check the certificate matches. If the site loads on http but not https, you are usually just missing a certificate — not a DNS problem.

Common mistakes

  • Leaving a stale A record from the old host alongside the new one.

  • Setting a CNAME on the bare domain (many providers disallow it; use an A record instead).

  • Forgetting a TTL was set to a day, then panicking when the change is slow.

  • Pointing www and non-www at different places, splitting your traffic.

Our domain registration and web hosting are designed to work together, so registration, DNS and certificates stay in one panel.

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