In order for your site to go live on your plan, you will need to first either use the Nexcess nameservers — meaning you could then edit the DNS entries directly in the portal which also comes with other benefits — or you will need to edit the CNAME record for your site domain.
If you log in to the portal of your site you will be able to find the “CNAME Target” that your site is being hosted on. The displayed hostname will be the record value that you will need to update in the CNAME record of your domain.
While a more traditional approach is to statically set your domain to a specific IP address with an A record, the CNAME approach affords your site specific benefits when hosting with Nexcess. We recommend using the CNAME Target hostname in virtually every situation where you otherwise might use an IP address.
Note that if you are using Nexcess Global DNS, you inherently gain these benefits and will not need to make use of the CNAME Target with your site.
Where your site domain is registered will depend on how you registered the domain. The record type used to define an alias record may vary for each registrar. You may see these alias records referred to as CNAME, ANAME, Apex, CNAME Flattening, or other similar terms.
We have provided links to a few common domain registrar's DNS guides below:
Copy the CNAME Target hostname into the CNAME or alias record type defined in your domain manager for your site domain and then you will need to wait for the DNS record change to propagate. DNS propagation can take 5 mins or it might take as long as over an hour. It all depends on what the time to live (TTL) is set as on the domain.
For 24-hour assistance any day of the year, contact our support team by email or through your Client Portal.
