Your own domain

Your site always lives at its uxdeck.site address. With your own domain, it opens at an address you own as well, such as www.yourname.com. You add two records where you bought the domain, uxdeck checks them, and the site is live and secured at your address, usually within minutes.

Your own domain is on Pro, with up to 3 domains across your sites, one per site. If the Domain page says it is almost ready, connecting is not open yet: check back soon.

Before you start

• Publish the file first. The Domain page asks you to, until the site is online.
• Have a domain you bought, and access to where you bought it (GoDaddy, Namecheap and the like).
• Your account must be at least two days old.

Connect your address

1. Open Deck settings (⌘,) and choose Domain, or press Your own domain in the Publish dialog.
2. Under Your address, type the address with www. in front, such as www.yourname.com. If you type the bare domain, uxdeck offers its www version: press Use www.yourname.com.
3. Under Where did you buy it?, choose your provider: GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Squarespace (formerly Google Domains), OVHcloud, IONOS, Hostinger, Porkbun, Gandi or Somewhere else. This only changes the wording of the steps.
4. Press Connect domain.

Add the two records

The page now says Add two records at your provider, with that provider’s steps. Each record has three parts, Type, a name and Value, each with a copy button:

• a TXT record, which proves the address is yours;
• a CNAME record for www, which points the address at your site.

Add each one at your provider, copying its parts exactly. Leave anything else (TTL, priority) as it is. Then come back and press Check and connect.

A new record can take a few minutes to show. If it is not found yet, the page says so: wait a little and press Check and connect again. Keep the TXT record as long as the domain is connected.

Wait for it to go live

Once connected, the domain shows Waiting for your records, with when it was last checked. uxdeck checks every few minutes and emails you when it is live. It usually takes a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. Press Check now to ask at once.

When it is ready the domain shows Live and secured, with an open button. If it does not open on a device yet, give it up to half an hour: some networks remember for a while that the address did not exist.

The bare domain

To make yourname.com (without www) open your site too, set up forwarding at your provider. The page shows how under the domain’s name, for your provider: forward the bare domain to your www address, as a permanent (301) redirect.

Disconnect

Press Disconnect domain. uxdeck asks first. The site stops opening at that address at once, and stays online at its uxdeck.site address. Then remove the CNAME and the TXT record at your provider, so the address no longer points at uxdeck.

Catches

• Use a www address. A bare domain such as yourname.com cannot be connected directly; connect www and forward the bare one.
• One domain per site. To change it, disconnect the current one first.
• An address connected to another site cannot be connected again until it is free.
• A domain that never goes live is dropped after seven days. Check the records and connect again.
• If a site of yours was taken down, domains are off for the account. Write to me if that is a mistake.