Guide

Setting up a custom domain

Right now your site lives at businessname.dabl.site. This guide walks you through pointing your own domain, like mybusiness.co.za, at it instead, so that is the address your customers see. About 15 minutes of clicking, plus some waiting time you do not have to sit through.

Sep 14, 20263 min read

Step 1: Create a free Cloudflare account

Go to cloudflare.com and click Sign Up. Create a free account with your email. Once you are logged in, click Add a Site and type in your domain, for example mybusiness.co.za. When it asks you to choose a plan, choose Free and continue.

Create a Cloudflare account and add your domain as a new zone on the Free plan. Cloudflare scans the domain's existing DNS records automatically before you continue.

Step 2: Point your domain at Cloudflare

Cloudflare will show you two addresses that look something like bob.ns.cloudflare.com and amy.ns.cloudflare.com. Copy them down. Now log in to wherever you originally bought your domain, your registrar, the company you paid for mybusiness.co.za. Find the settings for that domain and look for something called nameservers. Replace whatever is listed there with the two addresses Cloudflare gave you, and save your changes. This step can take anywhere from a few minutes to about a day to fully take effect. Cloudflare emails you once your domain is active.

Copy the two nameservers Cloudflare assigns to the new zone. Log in to your domain registrar, locate the nameserver (NS) settings for the domain, and replace the existing nameservers with Cloudflare's. DNS propagation can take up to 24 hours. Cloudflare emails you once the zone shows as active.

Step 3: Point your domain at your site

Once your domain shows as Active in Cloudflare, click DNS in the left-hand menu, then click Add record. Set the Type to CNAME. In the Name box, type @. In the Target box, type your dabl.site address, for example mybusiness.dabl.site. Make sure the little cloud icon next to the record is orange, that means it is turned on, then click Save. Now do the same thing again, but set the Name box to www instead of @, so both mybusiness.co.za and www.mybusiness.co.za work. Give it a few minutes, then visit your domain, you should see your site.

Once the zone is active, open the DNS tab and add a CNAME record with Name @ (the apex or root domain) and Target set to your dabl.site subdomain, proxied (orange cloud on) so Cloudflare can flatten the CNAME at the apex. Repeat with Name www. Both the apex and the www subdomain now resolve to your dabl.site address.

Stuck on any of this, or something is not showing up the way it should? Talk to us →, we would rather help you through it than leave you stuck on a DNS settings page.