How to point your domain or 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 terminology 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: How do I go live on Flywheel?

Table of Contents

1. Add the domain to your Flywheel site and note the IP address
2. Log in to your registrar and edit your DNS records
3. Confirm your changes using Flywheel’s DNS checker
Note: DNS propagation times
Note: Custom nameservers

Add the domain to your Flywheel site and note the IP address

1. From the site’s Overview tab, click the (+) icon in the Domains list to add the domain you’d like to point to Flywheel.
   
2. Fill out the domain information:
   • Enter the URL in the Domain field
   • Check the box to set the domain to Primary (if this will be your site’s main URL)
   • Select Yes for “Have you purchased this domain?”
   • 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 the site’s IP address to copy it to your clipboard for use in your DNS provider’s dashboard (instructions below). Clicking Back to site will take you back to the site’s Overview tab.
   
4. Optional: Add the www version of your domain to Flywheel by following steps 1-3 again, but enter the www version of your URL in the Domain field and leave Primary unchecked. If you decide to add the www domain, make sure to create an A record for it at your DNS provider as well.
   

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.
   

   Domain	DNS Record Type	Value
   example.com or @	A record	Your Flywheel site IP address
   www.example.com or www	CNAME record	example.com

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.
   *	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.

4. While we recommending setting up a CNAME record for www, 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.
   

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

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. On the Domains list, find the domain you just added and click Check DNS.
3. Once your site is pointed to Flywheel, the status will switch to ✅ Pointed and your domain registrar will be displayed as well.

Still need help?

DNS can be confusing, and nobody wants to break their site. If you have questions about DNS, Flywheel support is more than happy to help. Just grab a screenshot of your current settings, have your registrar login handy, and get in touch with one of our Happiness Engineers.