Using your own domain

Domain is where a blog stops being on our address and starts being on yours. Your own domain is free, like the rest of the blog.

Most people use a subdomain of the domain they already own, so blog.yourdomain.com. You can keep any DNS provider and your current nameservers. This does not change your main website’s hosting. If you want the blog inside your main site instead, at yourdomain.com/blog, see serving your blog at /blog.

The two records

Add the subdomain on the screen and it shows you exactly what to create where your DNS is. Both values have a copy button, because a mistyped DNS record is a bad afternoon.

A CNAME on the subdomain, pointing at our hosting address. This is what sends readers to us.

A TXT record on _rankbench-verify. plus your subdomain, carrying a token unique to your blog. This is what proves the domain is yours before we will serve anything on it or ask for a certificate in its name.

Then press Check. Records usually appear within a few minutes, though a provider is entitled to take longer.

The statuses

Waiting for DNS means we have looked and not found what we need yet. Press Check again in a few minutes. If it stays here, the records are the thing to re-read: a CNAME added at the root when it should be on the subdomain, or a provider that quietly appends your domain to a value that already ends in a dot, are the two usual culprits.

Getting a certificate means the records are right and a certificate is being issued. This is the stage that needs nothing from you.

Serving means the blog is answering on your domain over HTTPS.

Not working means a check that had been passing has stopped. The screen says which part failed. A domain does not go from Serving to Not working on its own, so this almost always means a DNS record was changed or a provider's proxy setting was turned on.

The checks re-run on their own: about once an hour while a domain is still waiting, and about once a day once it is serving. So a record you add at midnight is picked up without you being awake for it, and a record somebody removes next year is noticed rather than becoming a silent outage.

Once it is serving

Nominate it as the blog's real address. Everything canonical then points at your domain, the sitemap and the feed use it, and the Rankbench address redirects there.

Every post keeps its slug. A post at something.rankbench.site/the-long-way-round becomes blog.yourdomain.com/the-long-way-round, and the old address redirects. Nobody's link breaks and no ranking is thrown away.

Things that bite

A proxy in front of your DNS. If your DNS provider also proxies traffic, the CNAME has to be allowed to resolve to us rather than being intercepted. The check will tell you it found something other than what it expected.

An existing record on the same name. A subdomain can have one CNAME. An old A record or a parked-domain record on blog has to go first.

Root domains. Putting a blog on yourdomain.com itself rather than a subdomain means pointing your whole domain at us, which is a different decision from putting a blog on it. If that is genuinely what you want, use a subdomain first and move the root separately.

Removing a domain. Disconnecting it stops us serving on it and leaves your DNS alone. The blog keeps its Rankbench address, so it does not go dark. Do it in that order, though: delete the DNS records first and the domain spends a while in Not working before you get to the screen.