Connect your custom domain to your Local Line website to build trust, strengthen your brand, and make it easier for visitors to find and remember your site
Once you have finished building your site using the website builder tool, you will likely want to connect your custom domain.
Before starting this process, you will want to make sure you have access to edit the DNS records for your domain. Usually this will be done through your domain registrar, but not in all cases. If you are unsure, it's best to contact the person or organization that manages your domain name.
Connecting your domain
To connect your domain, first open the editor menu from the top-left, then choose Settings
Click Domain name on the left to open the Domain mapping page, then click the Map a domain button:
The instructions on which DNS records you will need to edit or create for your domain are shown here:
You will now need to log into your account with your domain host to manage the DNS records (this will be the account you created when you purchased your domain, it may be with a company like GoDaddy, Squarespace, Wix, etc.)
It's recommend to have both the A record for the "naked" or root domain (e.g. localline.ca, or sometimes displayed as @) and the CNAME record for the www subdomain (e.g. www.localline.ca), as some of your customers may or may not be accustomed to entering the www when visiting a website. If you have existing records for either of these, you will need to edit and update to the new values, or remove them and create new records.
If you don't see these records or you can't change them, it's possible your domain host has hidden or locked these records to prevent changes. You may need to access an advanced mode, or specifically unlock the records for editing. As each hosting company is different, please contact your host's support team for assistance with editing your DNS records.
Once you have made the DNS changes and saved them, it may take some time until the changes have fully updated and propagated around the Internet. After entering your domain name in the Domain to map field (just enter the domain without the www at the start), you can click the Test mapping button and the website builder will try to verify the records:
If it returns Failed, double-check that you have set the right values for the A and CNAME records, and that you don't have more than one A record for your root domain. You may also need to wait longer, sometimes up to 24 hours, before your changes can be verified. If it has been longer than 24 hours and you are still seeing Failed when testing, please reach out to our support team for further troubleshooting.
If the button changes to Looks good when you test, then you can go ahead and click on the Map domain button to finish connecting your domain.
SSL Certificates
When you connect your domain, the system will automatically attempt to provision and install an SSL certificate for your site. This process is generally fairly quick, but can sometimes take up to an hour if the servers have a lot of requests queued. Until the certificate is provisioned, you may see an error in your browser about a failure to establish a secure connection. You may also receive an error if you are migrating from another hosting provider, and your computer has cached the certificate from your old site. You can try visiting the new site in private/incognito mode, or clearing your browser's cache.
If it has been more than an hour and you are still seeing an SSL error in your browser when visiting your new site, please reach out to our support team for further assistance.