Point your DNS to Flywheel

The final step when taking your site live is to update your DNS records. This will route web traffic from your domain to your site hosted on Flywheel’s servers. Most of the time you will update these records at your domain registrar – where your domain was purchased.

If you’re brand new to the world of domain names, some of the terminologies may seem a little confusing. If you ever feel stuck, feel free to reference our Glossary of DNS terms.

Before continuing, we suggest completing the steps in this article: Go live on Flywheel

Step 1: Add the domain to your Flywheel site and note your new DNS records

1. From the site’s Overview tab, go to the Domains section and click the + Add Domain button to add the domain you’d like to point to Flywheel.
   
2. Next, fill out the domain information as described below.
   
   1. Domain: Enter the URL (without a prefix). Example: mywebsite.com
   2. Primary domain: Check the box if you want this to be your primary domain (if this will be your site’s main URL).
   3. www: By default, the www version of the domain will be added, but you can uncheck the box to skip this step if needed. Example: www.mywebsite.com.

   Then click Next.

   Note

   In the background, our system will automatically update all appropriate URL references in the database to this new primary domain.
3. Click to copy your new DNS records to your clipboard. We recommend keeping this tab open so you can easily copy them from here and paste them into your DNS editor.
   
   You will need to copy all the records you see in the table. For example:
   • A record (This is your Flywheel site’s IP address)
   • CNAME record (The CNAME record is only required if you’re adding the “www” version of your domain. If you’re not, the CNAME isn’t required and won’t be displayed in the list.)
   • TXT record

Note

If you’re not ready to point DNS quite yet, you can access your DNS records from the Overview tab anytime. Click the three-dot menu to reveal the options and then select Update DNS.

Step 2: Log in to your registrar and edit your DNS records

A DNS editor allows you to configure the records that tell an incoming visitor’s browser where to go for things like web traffic and email. To get your domain connected to your Flywheel site, you’ll need to tell this system to start pointing your domain to your site’s IP address.

1. In a separate tab, log in to your registrar’s admin panel and locate the DNS settings area.
2. We recommend using the following settings for domains where both the root domain (example.com) and the www version of that domain are going to point to the same site on Flywheel.
   

   Type/Record	Host/Label	Value
   A record	@	Your Flywheel site IP address
   CNAME record	www	example.com
   TXT record	Paste the host/label text string from your Flywheel DNS details.	Paste the destination/target text string from your Flywheel DNS details.

3. Some registrars may use placeholder symbols or shorthand to represent parts of DNS:

   @ – This represents the root version of your domain. In our example above, @ would be a placeholder for example.com without any subdomain or www before it.

   www – This represents a subdomain. Some registrars do not require you to type in the entire domain for every field. For most, simply typing in www in the name field will mean you are creating a subdomain that is actually www.example.com.

   TXT – This represents a text record which is used to verify that you own and control your domain, and prevents unauthorized use of your domain.

   * – This is a wildcard record. It means that it doesn’t matter what subdomain you type into your browser(www.example.com, shop.example.com, dolphins.example.com). All are going to be directed by this * value.

   Warning

   For security best practices, we recommend not pointing a wildcard entry directly to a Flywheel IP address, but instead to point any subdomain independently. The use of wildcard records may open your domain up to additional subdomains being created without your permission.
4. While we recommend setting up a CNAME record for www (as described above), you can alternatively create the www.example.com domain as an A record pointed at your Flywheel site IP address alongside the root level domain A Record. Like this:
   

   Domain	DNS Record Type	Value
   www.example.com	A Record	Your Flywheel site IP address

5. If your website lives on a subdomain, such as blog.example.com or shop.example.com, adjusting the root and www records are not necessary. Only one subdomain record is needed to point a subdomain. Like this:
   

   Domain	DNS Record Type	Value
   blog.example.com	A Record	Your Flywheel site IP address

Step 3: Confirm your changes using Flywheel’s DNS checker

After a short propagation window, your site should be connected to Flywheel! You can use our built-in DNS checker to confirm your settings.

1. Go to your site’s Overview tab on the Flywheel dashboard.
2. Click Refresh Status in the Domains section.

Once your site is pointed to Flywheel, the status will switch to ✅ Connected and the domain registrar will be displayed as well.

DNS propagation times: DNS by nature can take 24-48 hours to fully propagate across the entire internet, though it’s generally much quicker. This depends on the record’s TTL (Time To Live) value. If your DNS host allows you to adjust TTL, it’s best to set it to the minimum value at least 24 hours before you plan to go live to ensure the fastest propagation. For more info, check out this help article.

Need help?

If you have any questions our Happiness Engineers are here to help!