This article will help you connect your domain to your hosting using NameSilo and CloudWays.
The current article is "4.14. Tie Domain & Hosting" of our Complete SEO Guide Box.
Previous Article: 4.13. WWW or Non-WWW. Next Article: 4.15. Set Cloudflare CDN
CloudWays Settings
When connecting the domain and hosting, start by logging in to the CloudWays website and logging in.
Click [Servers] on the top menu bar.
Click “WWW” on your server and select your WordPress Application.
Click [Domain Management] from the left menu on the application page.
On the “DOMAIN MANAGEMENT” page, click [ADD DOMAIN].
On the “ADD DOMAIN” page, enter your domain with the “WWW” prefix (e.g., www.yourdomain.com).
Note: This was discussed in a previous article about selecting a “WWW” or non-WWW prefix for your domain name. Adding the above will prevent visitors from receiving a “Website Unavailable” message due to security measures restricting unauthorized access. Full message:
Website Unavailable. The website is unavailable due to security measures in place which restrict unauthorized access.
Although CloudWays has stated that adding the “WWW” prefix for the Domain Management setting is no longer necessary in this support article, we still recommend adding “WWW” to this CloudWays setting to avoid potential errors.
Note: When choosing the domain name with the “www” prefix, we’ll set it in the WordPress General Settings when we get to the WordPress installation section, which will handle the 301 redirection from “yourdomain.com” to “www.yourdomain.com.” You don’t need to configure it anywhere else.
In the next step to connect domain and hosting, click [ADD DOMAIN].
The domain will appear in the domains list.
To the right of your domain name, click on the icon with “3 vertical dots”, then click [Make Primary].
In the new pop-up window, click [SET AS PRIMARY].
Click [Access Details] from the left menu.
On the “ACCESS DETAILS” page, find the “Application Credentials” section, which contains the “Public IP” we’ll be using to point out our domain name.
Setting Up NameSilo
At this stage of connecting the domain and hosting, we will set the NameSilo.
Visit the NameSilo homepage and log in.
Click “My Account” from the top menu.
Click [Domain Manager] on the new page in the left menu bar.
Select the domain name you’ve registered.
Find the “DNS Records” entry and click “Update”.
You should currently have 3 DNS Records:
Hostname | Type | Address <empty> | A | <IP Address> www | A | <IP Address> _domainconnect | TXT | www.namesilo.com/domainconnect
Delete all the DNS records.
In the “Add/Edit a Resource Record” section, click on “A” to create an “A” record.
In the new window, leave the “HOSTNAME” field empty, and in the “IPV4 ADDRESS” field, input the “Public IP” from CloudWays’ “Access Details” page.
Click [SUBMIT].
Add another “A” Record with “www” (without quotes) in the “HOSTNAME” field. Under the “IPV4 ADDRESS” field, input the same “Public IP” from CloudWays.
Click [SUBMIT].
At this point of connecting domain and hosting, you should have two “A” records, one for the naked domain (like yourdomain.com) and one for the “www” subdomain (like www.yourdomain.com). Both point to the Public IP address of your server. Note that the DNS propagation can take between 48 to 72 hours. Read our article for more information on DNS propagation and how to check if DNS propagation is completed.
When DNS propagation is complete, you will get SSL errors while navigating your site. We will add an SSL certificate through Cloudflare when we configure it.
Things to Consider When You Connect Domain and Hosting
There are two types of bindings between the domain name and hosting: DNS Records with the IP Address of your hosting server and Name Servers with the Name Server’s domain addresses. If you set DNS Records, Name Servers will be disabled and vice versa.
CloudWays doesn’t provide Name Servers to the hosting server – only the IP address. So, to connect the domain and hosting, we use the DNS Records option with the IP address. Before we set Cloudflare, we want to check that everything works fine with the basic DNS setting of only the domain and the hosting. Once we begin using Cloudflare, we will point the Name Servers setting of our domain to Cloudflare’s, disabling the DNS Record pointing to CloudWays.
The current article is "4.14. Tie Domain & Hosting" of our Complete SEO Guide Box.
Previous Article: 4.13. WWW or Non-WWW. Next Article: 4.15. Set Cloudflare CDN
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