Step two is adding your domain to your Pressable site within the my.pressable.com Control panel.
This guide will show you how to point your domain to your website hosted on Pressable and add it to your site. If you don’t already own the domain you want to use, you will need to purchase one through a domain registrar. Some of the most popular registrars are Godaddy.com, Namecheap.com, Name.com, and Gandi.net, just to name a few.
Step One: Setting Things up at Your Registrar
There are two methods of completing step one. Once you have a domain, use one of the following methods to point your domain to our servers through your registrar’s control panel. We recommend the easy name server method.
Name server method
Point your name servers to Pressable:
ns1.openhostingservice.com
ns2.openhostingservice.com
ns3.openhostingservice.com
ns4.openhostingservice.com
ns5.openhostingservice.com
Not sure how to complete these steps? Click the name of your registrar below to find the step by step instructions on how to change your nameservers. If your registrar is not listed, contact them directly.
Note: that if you already have email hosting for your domain, we recommend using the A Record Method. Alternatively, if you’d like to manage DNS at Pressable and point the NS, please get in touch with us prior to changing the name servers to minimize/prevent any email downtime.
A Record method
Enter A records in your custom DNS settings at your registrar if you control your own DNS. This option is primarily for advanced users. You will need to add the first IP address to the existing A record with @ host. Then create a second A record for the @ host and use the second IP address for it. This is known as a round-robin configuration and adds redundancy to your DNS. You can find the specific IP address for your Pressable site in the MyPressable control panel:
Select the site you want to work on from your site list:
Navigate to the “Domains” tab.
Under “Option Two” in the Domains section it will show the complete IP addresses that you must enter as A records at your registrar. Note that the image below is an example only.
At your registrar, add the A records for both the www and root (@/non-www) versions of your domain. You will have 4 A records total for a round-robin configuration. This helps ensure that your site is always available for users.
Adding the DNS A records
Most DNS hosts allow you to add multiple IP addresses. For example, if your DNS host is GoDaddy, your domain’s records may look something like this now:
In this case, assuming the new IP addresses are 199.16.172.147 and 199.16.173.41 (for example), take the following steps:
1) Modify the existing A record pointing to 209.15.20.206, to 199.16.172.147
2) Click “Add”, and create another record where your host is “@”, your IP is “199.16.173.41”, and TTL (time to live) is “1/2 Hour”:
3) Once saved, your records should look like this:
In some cases, the “www” record may be a separate A record, and not a CNAME record. In other words, rather than having “@” as its value, it will have an IP address; in our example, 199.16.172.147.
In this case, you can either remove the “www” record and create a CNAME (as above), or you can change the IP address and add a new one, similarly to what was done for the “@” record above. It may look something like this:
My DNS host does not allow me to add two A records. What should I do?
Some customers have informed us that their DNS hosts do not allow them to add multiple records with the same IP address. If you run into this issue, you may use one IP address, but this is not ideal. If possible, we’d encourage you to verify that you are unable to implement multiple records for the same IP address with your DNS host or use a different DNS host.
Step two: Add Your Domain at Pressable
After you have updated the DNS settings at your registrar, visit your MyPressable Control Panel. After clicking your site’s name navigate to the DNS &Domains tab of the site. In the Domains section at the bottom, enter the non-www version of your domain name, in the text area and click Add Domain (we will automatically add the www version).
Once the domain has been added, it will begin provisioning the domain, DNS, and SSL which can be observed with the 3 icons next to the domain. You can hover over these icons for additional information. The icons will turn green when provisioning has completed successfully.
If you would like to change the primary domain, you can click the ★ button next to the domain that you would like to be the primary. All other domains will redirect to the primary.
In the example below, visitors of example.com will be taken seamlessly to the www version (www.example.com) instead of the non-www version. You now have your custom domain pointed to your Pressable website. It may take up to 72 hours for the the DNS to propagate, however in most cases this process will take less than an hour.
PLEASE NOTE: Subdomains (ex: name.sitename.com) are added in the same way, as they need to be created with the Domain Registrar, then pointed to Pressable using the Name Server Method or A Record Method listed above.
ALSO NOTE: Accented characters and characters in other alphabets (ex. hiragana, Arabic, Chinese) must be added using a type of encoding called punycode.
For example, the domain name mañana.com would be rendered as xn--maana-pta.com in punycode.
平仮名, ひらがな becomes xn--, -473a2epb8i528txtiqrx in punycode.
Step three (optional): Re-provision SSL certificate
This step will only apply if you added your domain on the Pressable control panel (Step two) a considerable amount of time before pointing the domain via DNS (Step one). If this is the case, you may find that your site doesn’t have an SSL certificate and you will need to re-provision one. You can do that from the Domains tab on your control panel.
Click the reset icon to the right of your domain. If you already have a valid SSL certificate you may see an error message, but if your site does not yet have a valid certificate this should generate one. You only need to click the icon once, we will include all secondary domains attached to the site in the certificate.
If you are still having trouble with SSL not working as expected please contact our support team for further assistance.
You now have your custom domain pointed to your Pressable website. It may take up to 72 hours for the the DNS to propagate, however in most cases this process will take less than an hour.
