Every IndieMade site comes with an IndieMade URL, such as yourwebsitenamegoeshere.indiemade.com. But if you own your own URL, such as yourcustomurl.com, and if you are at the standard plan or higher, you can use that domain instead. These instructions explain how to configure your domain so that people will see only your URL in their browsers when visiting your site.
You'll need to purchase your domain, from one of the many domain registrars, before you start. Many of our customers use GoDaddy, because it's cheap and because we have good instructions on how to follow these steps, but nearly any registrar will do.
First, wait a few minutes for your changes to take effect. Then visit your account page on IndieMade and look for a problem notification under your site name. If you've made a mistake in setting up your custom URL, you will see a link that looks like this:
Click on Get help for specific instructions on how to fix it.
If your account pages don't have the warning message This custom URL is not configured properly but it's still not working for you, close out all your browsers and open them again, to make sure you're starting from scratch. Type yourcustomurl.com into the browser's location bar and push enter. The text should be replaced with www. yourcustomurl.com, and as you click around your site, the name of the page you're looking at should appear in the location bar.
If you see yourwebsitenamegoeshere.indiemade.com in the location bar, or if it always reads only www. yourcustomurl.com no matter what page you're looking at, then you didn't do it correctly.
Contact support and ask for help. We have helped hundreds of people get their domains set up for IndieMade. We can help you too.
Once your changes have taken effect, and your custom URL is pointing at your IndieMade site, you'll want to take one more step: change your default base URL in your dashboard. Log in, navigate to Website > Promote, and type in your custom URL. When your IndieMade site notifies Google and Bing of changes in your site, it'll use your custom URL.
Although the four basic steps are the same, each DNS host is different. We have collected instructions for many popular hosts below. If your host isn't listed here, you may have to contact their customer support for help.
This short tutorial explains how to use DreamHost's control panel to set up your custom URL with IndieMade.
Now, just wait. It can take some time for your changes to take effect.
All traffic for www.yourcustomurl.com will now go to your IndieMade site. But if someone types in just yourcustomurl.com -- that is, without the www -- we'd like her to be directed to your site as well. To do this, we'll set up what DreamHost calls a redirect domain.
Wait a bit for the changes to take effect, and you're done.
Log into your account at enom.com, and then follow these instructions to set up your CNAME.
First, log into your Account Manager. Then, next to Domains, click on Manage.
Next to your domain, click on and select "Manage Connection".
Select the DNS Zone File tab.
Then select Add Record.
Select the CNAME record type.
The host name is "www". Change the "Points to" field to your IndieMade URL (yourwebsitenamegoeshere.indiemade.com). There is no "www." in front of your IndieMade URL. Click Finish when you're done.
Be sure to click Save Changes!
Select Settings from your domain management page. Click on "Manage" by the Forwarding region.
Select Add Forwarding.
Forward the Domain to your "www." URL (www.yourcustomurl.com). This should be a 301 redirect, forward only. Click Add when you're done with the entries.
Hit Save, and that's it!
If you get this error after trying to save your CNAME record:
It means that you already have a CNAME record for host name "www" and you need to delete the existing CNAME record before saving the new CNAME record that points to your IndieMade website. You're only allowed to have one CNAME record with the host name "www".
You may also edit the existing CNAME record, so it points to yourwebsitenamegoeshere.indiemade.com.
This short tutorial explains how to use Network Solution's control panel to set up your custom URL with IndieMade.
Log in to your Network Solutions control panel at http://www.networksolutions.com
Now when someone visits www.customurl.com, they'll see your IndieMade site.
Remember it can take up to 24 hours for your changes to take effect.
Add your CNAME like this:
Unfortunately, Yahoo does not permit redirects from the base domain to the www subdomain. Instead, contact support to set up a javascript redirect on your site.