Connect a domain to a website

Your hosting provider should tell you which record names and values to add. Common setups use an A record for an IP address or a CNAME for a provider hostname.

Translate each instruction literally:

• an A value must be an IPv4 address
• an AAAA value must be an IPv6 address
• a CNAME value must be a hostname
• @ usually means the zone apex
• www normally means www.example.com inside the example.com zone

Do not paste a URL such as https://host.example/path into an address or CNAME field. DNS records contain names and addresses, not schemes, ports, or paths.

Decide whether both the apex and www should work. They are different DNS names and may need separate provider configuration. An HTTP redirect from one to the other happens after DNS; a CNAME does not change the browser URL.

Before saving, inspect records already using the owner name. A standard CNAME cannot coexist with A, AAAA, TXT, or MX data at the same name. Remove an old record only after identifying the service that depends on it. A forgotten verification or mail record can matter even when it does not serve the website.

Verify one layer at a time:

dig A example.com
dig AAAA example.com
dig CNAME www.example.com
curl -I https://example.com/

First confirm authority publishes the expected record, then compare recursive resolvers. After DNS is correct, test the TCP connection, TLS certificate, and HTTP response. A correct address does not prove the web server recognizes the hostname.

If a proxy is enabled, public DNS should return proxy addresses rather than the origin. In that case, an HTTP proxy error can mean the origin, certificate mode, or application is wrong while DNS is behaving exactly as configured.

Your action is to turn one hosting provider’s domain instructions into a table with owner, type, value, proxy status, and purpose. Verify the final DNS answer and HTTPS response separately.