You connect a custom domain in the 🌐 Custom Domain card on the Service Area page in your back office.

1. Open your back office.
2. In the sidebar, click Admin → Service Area.
3. The first card is 🌐 Custom Domain.

Since your site is already live at your platform URL until you connect a domain, you can do this on day one or any time later.

Custom domain configuration starts in one input field. Type your domain, click Add. SiteStakes then detects where you registered it.

1. In the Custom Domain card, type your domain. Use either format:

• www.yourbusiness.com (most common)
• yourbusiness.com (apex / bare domain)

1. Press Enter or click Add Domain.
2. Wait a second. A green badge appears showing your auto-detected registrar — for example, "Detected: GoDaddy". The wizard recognizes 21 common registrars.
3. If the wrong registrar is detected, click Wrong? Select yours and pick yours from the dropdown.

You add two CNAME records at your domain registrar — one for the apex and one for www. Both records are CNAMEs pointing to the same target: sites.sitestakes.com.

TypeHostValueCNAME@ (apex)sites.sitestakes.comCNAMEwwwsites.sitestakes.com

The Custom Domain card shows these same values with one-click copy buttons.

1. In the Custom Domain card, find the DNS records table.
2. Click Copy on the Value field for the first record.
3. Open a new browser tab and log in to your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, etc.).
4. Follow the on-screen instructions in the Custom Domain card — they're tailored to your registrar with the exact menu names and field labels.
5. Paste sites.sitestakes.com into the Value / Target / Points To field at your registrar (the field name varies — your instructions show the right one).
6. Save the DNS record.
7. Repeat for the second record.
8. Return to SiteStakes.

Cloudflare users: set the Proxy status to DNS only (gray cloud). The orange cloud breaks the connection.

Wix users: Wix controls your nameservers by default. Follow the Wix-specific instructions in the Custom Domain card — there are extra steps.

Apex domains on GoDaddy, Network Solutions, or older registrars: if your registrar doesn't allow a CNAME on the apex (the @ host), use an ALIAS or ANAME record instead — same value: sites.sitestakes.com. If your registrar supports neither, contact SiteStakes support — we have a fallback for those cases.

Once you connect your custom domain, verification is automatic. This can take a few minutes - DNS has had time to propagate first.

1. Wait 5 to 15 minutes after saving the DNS record at your registrar.
2. Return to the Custom Domain card in SiteStakes.
3. Watch the DNS badge:

• Verified ✅ — done, move to SSL.
• Pending ⏳ — keep waiting.
• Failed ❌ — you'll get the exact error and how to fix it when this happens.

DNS propagation usually takes 5 to 15 minutes. Up to 48 hours is possible but rare. If the badge stays Failed or your site won't load after verification, check the value at your registrar for typos.

Just like domain connection, you'll see the process as SSL is activated. This takes a few minutes to complete, usually less than 2 minutes. Once DNS verifies, SiteStakes issues a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate automatically. The system checks for new verified domains every minute, so your certificate usually issues within 60 seconds of DNS verification.

1. Wait 1 to 2 minutes after the DNS badge shows Verified ✅.
2. Refresh the Custom Domain card.
3. Check the SSL badge — it should read Active 🔒.
4. Visit your custom domain in a browser. You should see the padlock icon next to the URL and the site should load over https://.

SSL certificates renew automatically every 90 days. You never have to think about it.

If the SSL badge stays on Pending for more than 5 minutes, check the error message shown below the badge — it tells you exactly what went wrong (most commonly: your domain is behind Cloudflare's orange cloud).

You connect more than one domain by adding each one in the Custom Domain card, then choosing which is the Primary. Each Primary domain redirects up to 5 Alias domains, depending on your plan.

1. In the Custom Domain card, add your second domain the same way as the first.
2. The first domain you added is your Primary by default.
3. To change which domain is Primary, click Set as Primary on the alias you want to promote. The old Primary is automatically demoted to Alias.

Aliases 301 redirect to your Primary, so visitors always land on one canonical address regardless of which domain they typed.

Your platform URL works while DNS propagates. It has the format https://sitestakes.com/sites/{user}/{site-id}.

Keep sending visitors and ads there until your custom domain shows DNS Verified ✅ and SSL Active 🔒.

After SSL goes Active, any visitor who hits the platform URL gets 301-redirected to your custom domain.

You remove a domain by clicking Remove on its card in the Custom Domain section and confirming. The DNS record at your registrar is separate — delete it there too.

1. In the Custom Domain card, find the domain you want to disconnect.
2. Click Remove.
3. Confirm.
4. Delete the DNS record at your registrar.

If you remove your Primary, promote an Alias to Primary first — otherwise your real estate website falls back to the platform URL.