Domains & DNS Setup

Connect your own domain (or a subdomain) to your site and send email from your own address by adding a handful of DNS records at your registrar. The platform generates the exact records for you and provisions the HTTPS certificate automatically — there's no certificate or server work on your end. This page uses GoDaddy as the worked example; Namecheap, Cloudflare, Squarespace and others follow the same steps with slightly different labels.

Where to Find Your Records

Go to Admin → Configuration → Domains. Each domain row has a DNS records toggle — expand it to open the Domain & Email Setup table. This is the source of truth: it lists every record you need with its Type, Name, Value, and a live Status (Verified / Pending). Click any Name or Value cell to copy it to your clipboard, and use Check Now to force an immediate re-check after you've added them.

If the panel says records haven't been provisioned yet, ask your platform administrator to set up your domain — the records appear here once they do. Always copy the values straight from your own panel; the examples below show the shape of each record, but the actual names and values are generated per-domain.

What Records You'll See

The panel groups records into two purposes:

• Domain (connect your site) — a CNAME that points your hostname at our origin (or A/AAAA records if the panel provides them for an apex domain), plus a TXT record that validates ownership and lets us issue your SSL certificate.
• Email (send from your domain) — a set of records that authorize the platform to send your transactional email (order confirmations, receipts, booking reminders) as [email protected]. Without these, mail still sends but is far more likely to be marked as spam.

Adding the Records at GoDaddy

Sign in to GoDaddy and open My Products → your domain → DNS (the Manage DNS / DNS Records screen). Then, for each row in the Domain & Email Setup table:

1. Click Add (or Add New Record).
2. Set Type to match the panel (CNAME, TXT, A, etc.).
3. Paste the Name into GoDaddy's Host field. GoDaddy appends your domain automatically, so enter shop for shop.yourdiveshop.com, or @ for the bare domain. If the panel shows a fully-qualified name, drop the trailing .yourdiveshop.com part.
4. Paste the Value into GoDaddy's Value / Points to field exactly as shown.
5. Leave TTL at the default (1 hour) and Save.

Repeat until every row from the panel exists in GoDaddy. A stray extra character in a Name or Value is the most common reason a record won't verify — copy-paste rather than retype.

Subdomain vs. Apex Domain

Pointing a subdomain (e.g. shop.yourdiveshop.com) with a CNAME is the simplest and recommended path — it's universally supported and leaves whatever you host on the bare domain completely untouched.

An apex domain (yourdiveshop.com with no subdomain) can't take a plain CNAME at GoDaddy. Use whichever record type the panel provides for the apex (typically an A/AAAA record). The www. variant is handled for you. Don't use GoDaddy's Domain Forwarding feature for this — it won't serve your site correctly.

Verification & HTTPS

DNS changes typically spread within a few minutes but can take a few hours depending on your registrar and TTL. The platform re-checks your records automatically and the Status column flips each one to Verified as it resolves (the domain row itself shows Active once it's fully set up, or Pending while it's in progress). You don't have to wait around — hit Check Now to re-check on demand.

Once the ownership TXT record verifies, the HTTPS certificate is issued and renewed automatically. Leave the SSL-validation TXT record in place even after it verifies — removing it can break certificate renewal down the line.

Delegated DCV (recommended)

Certificates are served through Cloudflare for SaaS. Because you're keeping DNS at GoDaddy rather than moving your nameservers — what Cloudflare calls a partial DNS setup — the standard per-hostname TXT validation record above may need to be re-published each time the certificate renews. That's easy to forget and is the usual cause of a lapsed certificate.

Delegated DCV avoids that entirely and is the recommended option for a partial setup: you add a one-time CNAME that delegates domain-control validation to Cloudflare, and Cloudflare then places the validation record for you on every future renewal — you never touch it again. The record looks like:

The exact target (the .dcv.cloudflare.com value, which includes an identifier specific to our Cloudflare zone) is shown in your Domains panel or supplied by your platform administrator — add it at GoDaddy exactly as you would any other record. Once this one CNAME is in place and verified, you can leave the per-renewal TXT handling to Cloudflare.

Troubleshooting

• Still Pending after a few hours? Compare the Name and Value in GoDaddy against the panel character-for-character. The panel shows the value it expected, so any mismatch is easy to spot.
• Duplicate or conflicting records. If GoDaddy already has a record with the same Type and Host, edit it to match rather than adding a second one — conflicting records won't resolve predictably.
• Email lands in spam. Confirm every email record from the panel is present and Verified; missing DKIM/SPF-style records are the usual cause.

Related

See Multi-Domain to run your shop on more than one domain, Shop & Products for running a store-only site or embedding the store in an existing website, and Email & Notifications for the email types sent from your domain.