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How do I point my custom domain at my StackExchange site?

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6 Answers

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Make your domain a CNAME for lbny-se.fogcreek.com, this gives us the most flexibility to make sure that your site will keep working even if we need to change the main IP address for StackExchange (if for example we need to change data centers or something bad happens).

Unfortunately, this only works if you want a subdomain of your own domain pointed at your StackExchange site.

... but I really, really want my site to be "foo.com" and not "www.foo.com"

We can accommodate you: create an A record to that points your domain at 64.34.80.165, our stuff will take care of it from there, but you're on the hook to keep your domain pointed at the right place. In the event that we need to change the IP address (moving data centers, bad stuff, etc.) we'll let you know, but we can't magically take care of it for you.

In either case

You'll probably want to set low TTL values (5-30 minutes) so that any updates propagate quickly.

Can I Have Both

Yes, point them both at the load balancer.

Once you've got your DNS set up

Go to the admin->site rules tab and add all of the domains you want your site to be reachable from as "aliases".

You should then select one of your domains to be the primary domain, all of the traffic on your site's other aliases will be redirected to it's primary domain.

Domain Management

(For those of you who have sites that were created before last night that and do not yet have the "aliases" and "primary domain" sections under site rules, we will be migrating your sites in the relatively near future). Done.

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Is it possible to have both? – Scott W. Sep 4 at 17:44
@Scott: There's no reason why you can't have an A record for foo.com and a CNAME record for www.foo.com (preferably CNAME'd to foo.com). – Kyle Cronin Sep 4 at 20:01
@Kyle - However, Fog Creek is only setting up the webserver to respond to foo.com, so requests that go to www.foo.com just get an IIS7 splash screen. I have a workaround. I'll post it below. – Scott W. Sep 6 at 15:17
@Kyle - Update - Fog Creek will setup IIS to respond to www.foo.com as well, so you don't have to do anything tricky, just ask them. – Scott W. Sep 9 at 11:23
I tried to follow the instructions several time during the last past 48 hours and I can't get mysite.com working, I'm looking for a Godaddy screen shot setup, can someone E-mail this to me at tarek.demiati AT gmail.com, Thanks – Tarek Nov 20 at 18:56
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What about allowing users to simply configure their domain to use FogCreek/StackExchange DNS servers? This would not only provide FogCreek will the flexibility to switch IPs or load balance the site, but it would also provide the capability of adding and configuring subdomains as additional StackExchanges (i.e. meta.example.com for example.com's meta site) right from the interface without requiring the user to perform any manual DNS changes.

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We'll consider it as a feature, but we're documenting how to point your domain at your site right now (and we'll evolve the answer as things change). – Aaron Maenpaa♦ Sep 3 at 15:18
1 
 Should I break it out into its own feature-request then? – Kyle Cronin Sep 3 at 15:37
@Kyle Sure, go ahead. – Aaron Maenpaa♦ Sep 3 at 16:51
OK, done: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63/… – Kyle Cronin Sep 4 at 20:14
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Goal:

To redirect "mydomain.com" to "www.mydomain.com"
(I don't want "mydomain.com" to appear nowhere, and refrain Google to think I'm double-contenting his databases)

What I did:

  1. I made for www.mydomain.com a CNAME for lbny-se.fogcreek.com
  2. I made for mydomain.com an A record for 64.34.80.165

Now I have one site with two differnet URLs.What did I miss here? :)

Was step #2 necessary at all?

Thanks,
Assaf

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2 
 Yes, both steps were necessary. Now, all that's left is to add mydomain.com as an alternate domain to your site. When this is done, any traffic to mydomain.com will be redirected to your primary domain, www.mydomain.com. – Kyle Cronin Oct 30 at 1:15
Works like charm! Thanks, Kyle for the advice and the patience - much appreciated :) – atlantis76 Oct 30 at 9:07
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EDIT: I no longer need to do this because if you contact Fog Creek and ask them, they'll configure the web server to respond to www.foo.com in addition to foo.com. I'm leaving this answer here just for the sake of it being an odd hack.

Here's how I managed to get both foo.com and www.foo.com to point to my stackexchange website. It's very convoluted, but it works.

  1. I registered a second domain, bar.com.
  2. In the dns setup for foo.com, I created an A record to point to 64.34.80.165
  3. Also in the dns setup for foo.com, I created a CNAME record to point www to bar.com
  4. Through my domain registrar I setup a redirect for bar.com -> http://foo.com/
  5. Odd part: I setup a redirect for foo.com -> http://bar.com/

So:

QED

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Contact Fog Creek how? Through meta SE? – ripper234 Oct 17 at 7:21
1 
 @ripper234: Their regular customer support page: fogcreek.com/sendmail.html – Scott W. Oct 17 at 13:05
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Hi I have fmoverflow.net going to fmoverflow.stackexchange.com so it works however if i try to login there it doesnt find it I then must login at fmoverflow.stackexchange.com

how can I fix this?

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There are quite a few login bugs related to more than one domain, depending on your openID provider. For instance, Google only hands out a login for a specific domain. First, make sure you set the primary domain in your site setup to fmoverflow.net. Also, since this is itself a question, it might be better to ask it separately. It won't get too much attention down here. – Scott W. Oct 10 at 12:48
this exactly why I haven't set my domain yet. The issue is supposed to be resolved in the coming weeks if i'm not mistaken? – Bias Oct 10 at 15:10
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Hey, I just launched a site for Video Games Questions and Answers...

I'm now having the logo and icons designed, can someone start some topics and see everything is working?

I've only just hooked up to the new URL: http://vidgameanswers.com Is it working ok?

Cheers, Ash.

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