Connecting a domain

Intro

Connecting a domain to your The.com site is easy. All it takes is adding an A record and a CNAME record to your DNS.

Before continuing, you’ll need to be signed into your The.com account and your domain registrar’s (GoDaddy, Google Domains, Namecheap, etc.) account.

From your profile on The.com, find the site you want to connect a domain to and then:

Click the arrow next to the “Edit Site” button to open the site’s the drop-up menu
Click “Settings” to open the website’s Site Settings modal
Type in your domain

Note: you can type in either the apex domain or the www subdomain. Either one will work.

❓ What’s an apex domain? The apex, or root, domain is your domain without any subdomains. For example, if your website was available at https://www.mywebsite.com then the apex domain would be mywebsite.com. Though it is so common, www is actually a subdomain prefix.

Once you have typed in your domain, you will see two options to start the DNS connection:

“Connect Domain” which will automatically add two DNS records via Entri’s DNS API.

“Manually Connect” which will show you the two DNS records that you will need to copy and paste into your DNS settings.

Automatic Domain Connection

If you select this option, you’ll be guided through a modal giving permission to Entri to add two records to your DNS.

Once this is done, your website will be available at your domain within 10-20 minutes, though in rare cases it may take 24 hours.

Manual domain configuration

If you select this option, The.com will show you the following two records to add in your DNS settings:

“A” record:

Type: A
Host: @
Value: 104.16.112.7

“CNAME” record:

Type: CNAME
Host: www
Value: dns.the.com

The exact steps will differ slightly depending on which domain registrar you are using. For each record, you’ll basically just set

For details, you can use the following guides.

Don’t see your domain provider? Try googling “How to add DNS record in [insert domain provider]”

After you have added this record to your DNS, go back to The.com and confirm that you have added them.

Your website will be available at your subdomain within 10-20 minutes, though in rare cases it may take 24 hours.

Troubleshooting

CAA Records with Cloudflare

If you are using Cloudflare and your domain connection failed, please add this CAA record on your DNS records and try again.

Cloudflare Proxies

If you are using Cloudflare, you may need to disable the proxy and set it to DNS only. Additionally, you may need to leave the proxy running on the dummy A record (the URL generated by The.com). This will allows a page rule to trigger the root domain.

No luck?

Feel free to reach out to cs@the.com for more specialized help.

Looking to set up a subdomain?

Read about how to connect your site to a subdomain →

Intro