Connect your custom domain

Overview

Free and Pro plans publish to a projectname.dash.visionclass.shop subdomain by default. Max and Enterprise plans can publish to any custom domain or subdomain you control, with automatic HTTPS certificate provisioning, global CDN delivery, and auto-renewing certificates. This article walks through the full process end to end, including DNS configuration at common registrars, how to verify propagation, and how to handle common edge cases like root domains versus subdomains.

A custom domain is available exclusively on the Max and Enterprise plans. If you are on Free or Pro, upgrade to Max first from the Billing section of the dashboard and then come back to this article.

Prerequisites

Before you begin the custom-domain connection process, verify you have three things. First, an active Max or Enterprise plan with at least one project in your account that you want to publish. Second, access to the DNS configuration dashboard for your domain. This is typically at the domain registrar where you bought the domain, or at a third-party DNS provider like Cloudflare if you moved DNS there later. Third, roughly 15 minutes of uninterrupted time, plus potentially a waiting period for DNS propagation.

If you do not already own a domain, you can buy one from any registrar. Popular choices include Namecheap, Cloudflare Registrar, Porkbun, Google Domains, GoDaddy, Name.com, and many others. Clonerix is not a domain registrar and we do not sell domains directly. Any domain from any registrar will work as long as you have access to edit the DNS records.

Step one: Add the domain in the editor

Open the project you want to publish in the Clonerix visual editor. Click the top-right Publish or Republish button to open the publish dialog. In the Destination section, choose Custom domain.

Enter the exact domain or subdomain you want to publish this project to in the domain input field. Choose carefully. The exact string matters.

• If you want to publish to a subdomain like www.example.com, pages.example.com, or offer.example.com, enter the full subdomain including the left-most label.
• If you want to publish to the root or apex domain (example.com, no subdomain prefix), enter the bare domain with no www prefix.
• If you want both the root domain and the www subdomain to serve the same site, configure both separately and set up a redirect. The process for both is covered later in this article.

Click Next step. The dialog now shows you the specific DNS records you need to create at your DNS provider. Leave this dialog open. You will need to copy these values in the steps below.

Step two: Create DNS records at your registrar

Open a new browser tab and sign in to the dashboard of your DNS provider (typically your domain registrar). Navigate to the DNS Management or DNS Records page for the specific domain you are connecting. The exact location varies by provider but is almost always labeled something obvious like DNS, DNS Records, Name Server Management, or Zone Editor.

Before creating new records, check if there are existing conflicting records for the same hostname. For example, if you are connecting www.example.com and there is already an existing A record or CNAME record for the www hostname pointing somewhere else, delete or edit the old record first. Having multiple records for the same hostname causes unpredictable behavior.

What you create depends on whether you are connecting a subdomain or a root domain.

Subdomain configuration (www, pages, offer, etc.)

For any subdomain that is not the bare root domain, create a single CNAME record.

• Type: CNAME
• Hostname / Name / Host: the subdomain prefix you are connecting. For www.example.com this is www. For pages.example.com this is pages. Some providers expect the full value including the domain, others expect only the prefix before the first dot. If in doubt, check the placeholder text in the input field.
• Value / Points to / Target: copy and paste the exact target hostname shown in the Clonerix publish dialog. This value is typically cname.dash.visionclass.shop or a similar branded target.
• TTL (Time To Live): Leave at Default or Auto. If you need to set a numeric value explicitly, 300 seconds (5 minutes) is a good choice for fast propagation during setup. After everything is verified working you can raise it to 3600 for lower query volume.

Root / apex domain configuration (example.com, no prefix)

Root domains are slightly more complicated because not all DNS providers fully support CNAME records at the apex. If your provider supports what is typically called CNAME flattening, ANAME, or ALIAS records, use the following:

• Type: ALIAS, ANAME, or flattened CNAME (the exact name varies by provider)
• Hostname / Name: the root domain itself. Often written as @ or the bare domain name.
• Value / Target: the same target hostname shown in the Clonerix publish dialog (usually cname.dash.visionclass.shop).

If your DNS provider does not support any of those record types at the apex, you must use an A record instead. Copy the two IP addresses shown in the Advanced section of the publish dialog. Create two separate A records, both at the root hostname, each pointing to one of the two IP addresses. Having two IP addresses provides automatic failover if one is ever temporarily unavailable.

Step three: Verify and issue certificate

Return to the Clonerix publish dialog with the DNS records you just created. Click the large Verify DNS configuration button. Clonerix immediately queries the global DNS system to check if the records you created have propagated far enough to be visible to our verification system.

DNS propagation is the process by which DNS servers worldwide update their cached copies of your records. It is often nearly instant for modern DNS providers but can in extreme cases take up to 48 hours for very old cached values to fully expire around the world. If you recently changed nameservers for your domain, expect propagation to be slower.

If verification succeeds immediately, you are in the fast path. The dialog switches to "DNS verified" status and automatically begins the certificate issuance process. Let it run. Certificate issuance usually completes in under a minute.

If verification fails the first time, wait 5 minutes and click Verify again. It is very common for newly created records to not be visible yet for the first few minutes. If verification fails three times in a row after 15 to 30 minutes of waiting, double-check the record values for typos. Single-character typos in CNAME target values are the single most common support ticket for this flow.

Once the certificate is successfully issued, the dialog shows a success message and green checkmarks across every step.

Step four: Publish and verify

Click the Publish to custom domain button in the final step of the dialog. Clonerix triggers a production build of your project with the custom domain configured and deploys it to the global edge network. This is the same build pipeline used for subdomain publishes, so the process takes the standard 15 to 30 seconds.

When the publish completes, click Open in new tab to verify the live site. If everything is configured correctly you should see your site served over a valid HTTPS connection with a green padlock icon in the browser address bar.

Open developer tools, navigate to the Security or Certificate tab, and verify that the TLS certificate was issued by a trusted certificate authority and lists your custom domain in the subject alternative names list.

Step five: Root domain and www redirects

Many sites want both example.com and www.example.com to serve the same site without requiring duplicate projects. Configure whichever version you consider canonical as described above. Then for the non-canonical variant:

• If www is canonical, publish the project to www.example.com and then set up a redirect from the root domain to www. Most DNS providers offer a feature called URL redirect, web redirect, or forwarding.
• If the bare root domain is canonical, publish to the root and redirect www to the root.

Some DNS providers require a paid upgrade for URL forwarding. If yours does not offer it, or you want to keep everything inside Clonerix, create a second minimal project in Clonerix containing nothing but a JavaScript and meta-tag redirect, publish it to the non-canonical hostname, and point that hostname's DNS to Clonerix as well.

Using Cloudflare as your DNS provider

Cloudflare is the most popular third-party DNS provider and works great with Clonerix custom domains. The setup process is the same as any other provider with one important caveat: after creating the CNAME record, click the orange cloud icon to the right of the record entry and toggle it to DNS only (gray cloud) rather than the default Proxied (orange cloud) state.

Clonerix already serves your site from a global CDN with HTTPS termination at the edge. Double-proxying through both Cloudflare and the Clonerix CDN is unnecessary and occasionally causes issues with certificate issuance, cache invalidation, and header handling. Gray cloud means DNS only, which is the correct configuration.

Common issues and how to fix them

"DNS verification failed" repeated errors after 30 minutes. The most common causes are a typo in the record name or target value, an old conflicting record still in the zone that you forgot to delete, or the record created under the wrong domain name in a multi-domain registrar account. Double-check each of those before contacting support.

Site works in some geographic locations but shows a certificate error in others. This is a propagation timing issue. The certificate was issued and installed on most edge nodes but not all. Wait an hour and try again. If it persists for more than 24 hours, contact support with the domain name and the specific locations where it fails.

Too many redirects / redirect loop error. Almost always caused by HTTPS termination settings at an intermediate proxy. If you are running behind Cloudflare, make sure you switched to gray-cloud DNS-only as described in the Cloudflare section above. If your DNS provider has a "Flexible SSL" option enabled, disable it. Clonerix always serves HTTPS, so any upstream "flexible" mode that terminates HTTPS at the proxy and re-issues HTTP to the origin causes an infinite redirect loop.

Root domain is not reachable but www works. Your DNS provider likely does not support CNAME at the apex and you forgot to fall back to the dual A record configuration. Go back to step two and create the A records with the two IP addresses shown in the publish dialog.

Old version of the site still shows after republish. This is a CDN cache issue. Republishing always triggers a global cache invalidation, but a small number of edge nodes can occasionally hold on to stale content for a few extra minutes. If it persists longer than 15 minutes, click Unpublish project, wait 60 seconds, then Publish again.

Removing a custom domain from a project

If you ever want to stop publishing a project to a custom domain, open the Publish dialog, choose Change destination, and switch the project back to a Clonerix subdomain or to Unpublished. The custom domain configuration is removed from the project. The DNS records at your registrar still exist and need to be manually deleted separately if you no longer want them pointing to Clonerix.

You can connect multiple projects to multiple different custom domains or subdomains on a single Max plan. There is no hard per-account limit on the number of distinct custom domains.

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