How to use your own domain name

Every Fabrik subscription includes an onfabrik.com web address. You can also link as many of your own domain names to your Fabrik website as you like. To do this you need to make a few changes to your domain's configuration. This is usually done via the control panel provided by your domain registrar (the company from whom you registered the domain).

What is DNS?

DNS is the thing that translates a friendly URL like fabrik.io into an IP Address; a long number that works like a postal address for things connected to the internet.

DNS Records make up the address book for your domain. If you have an existing website then it's likely you'll have DNS records pointing to wherever the website is hosted. If you've just registered your domain then they may just point to some kind of holding page.

To link your domain to your Fabrik website you need to change your DNS records to point to our IP Address 23.101.60.214

Getting Started

Log in to the control panel of whoever manages your domain's DNS. Usually this is the same place where you registered your domain but we often find that the domain registrar and DNS are in two places. If you're not sure who this is, you can check here. For example, if I check my domain benfoster.io I can see from the results that my DNS is hosted by Gandi:

Domain : benfoster.io
Status : Live
Expiry : 2015-12-01
NS 1   : b.dns.gandi.net
NS 2   : c.dns.gandi.net
NS 3   : a.dns.gandi.net

Updating your DNS

Once you've logged in to your domain registrar's control panel you need to make some changes to your DNS records. The exact process for doing this can differ between providers. We have step-by-step guides for a number of popular registrars below.

If you're provider is not listed you need to configure the following records to point to Fabrik:

Record Name  Type    IP Address       Example URL
@            A       23.101.60.214    yourdomain.com
www          A       23.101.60.214    www.yourdomain.com

If you already have these records you can just update the IP Address. If you don't have them (possible if you've just registered the domain) you may need to create them.

Linking your domain to your Fabrik site

The final step is to link your domain within the Fabrik dashboard. To do this, log in to Fabrik and go to Settings > Domains:

Next, link your domains using the provided form:

Make sure both the non-www and www versions of your domain are added. This way it doesn't matter if someone enters www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com, they'll still find your Fabrik website.

Choosing a primary domain

Every Fabrik website has a primary domain/URL. If someone navigates to a non-primary domain we redirect them to your primary domain. What you choose is up to you - personally we favour the non-www version (e.g. yourdomain.com) because it is shorter and looks nicer in the address bar.

The Internet is a big place!

DNS records are replicated all over the internet so any changes you make can often take up to 48 hours to propagate. If after a few hours your domain still goes to the old location, please be patient and wait a bit longer. If you want absolute confirmation that you've set everything up correctly you can use Dig Web Interface.