If a new customer wants to keep an existing domain with an external domain hosting provider and use this domain on a Mono website, you need to set up a domain redirect.
Follow the steps below to create a domain redirect.
See how
1. Set A Record and CNAME
The first step is for the customer to change two DNS settings with their domain hosting provider: A Record and CNAME. The A Record has to be changed so that it points to your dedicated Mono reseller IP address that was supplied to you by Mono during your onboarding process. If you can't find your reseller IP address, please contact the Mono Service Team and request it.
The CNAME record is used to alias one name to another. For example, if you've registered the domain name 'example.com' you also want to make sure that visitors typing in 'www.example.com' land on your website. By creating 'www.example.com' as an alias (CNAME) of 'example.com', visitors will land on the correct IP no matter which of the two URLs they type in.
Example: if your customer owns the domain petersbakery.com then the two added settings must look like this:
- petersbakery.com > A Record > 185.58.xxx.xx
- www.petersbakery.com > CNAME > petersbakery.com
Here's an example of the above records implemented for a domain hosted on GoDaddy:
If the customer doesn't have access to a domain control panel, they'll need to contact their current domain provider and ask them to fill in the settings for them.
Update time
Please note that the time required for the changes to come into effect depends on the TTL (Time To Live) settings of the domain hosting provider. The change takes place when the TTL updates, which it normally does every 1-4 hours.
2. Add the customer domain in RAI
Once the first step has been completed, the domain is ready to be attached to a website on the Mono platform. To attach the domain to your customer's website, follow the steps below.
1. Go to the site settings of the website you wish to point the domain to.
2. Click on Edit.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the overlay and type in the domain name in the Attach domain section. Click the green Attach button. The domain is now attached to the website.
You may have to publish the website for the changes to come into effect.
Several domains attached to one site
If you have more than one domain attached to a site, you can select one domain as the primary domain. The other attached domains will redirect to the primary domain. Tick the Primary box if you want to make the attached domain the primary one.
Important note on IPv4/IPv6 support
Mono currently only supports IPv4. If you're using your own DNS configuration, make sure that both your A records and AAAA records point to Mono - or remove the AAAA records entirely. If you have set up IPv4 to point to Mono and the IPv6 to point somewhere else, network routing might send some visitors to the Mono site and others not, as explained in the chart below.
You can use an online IPv6 compatibility tester (such as this one) to checker whether a website is running on IPv6 or not.