Buying a domain takes five minutes. Connecting it to a website is where the project usually stalls. You open your registrar's DNS panel, meet a table full of record types you've never heard of, and close the tab.
SPACEBAR reduces the whole job to two copy-paste records and a live checklist that tells you exactly what to add and whether it worked. Here's the full walkthrough.
Two records, and both addresses work
Custom domains are a paid-site feature. Open your site's settings, type your domain — with or without the www — and SPACEBAR shows you the records to add at your registrar:
CNAMEonwwwpointing atconnect.withspacebar.comALIAS(or the listedArecords) on@, also pointing atconnect.withspacebar.com
Why two? Because visitors type both. Some will enter yourdomain.com, some www.yourdomain.com, and a site that only answers one of them looks broken half the time. SPACEBAR always provisions both: the variant you entered becomes your canonical address, and the other one redirects to it.
These records are just signposts telling the internet your names should be answered by SPACEBAR's edge network. You don't transfer the domain, you don't change nameservers, and your email keeps working — MX records are untouched. Every value in the checklist has a copy button, so the registrar step is paste, paste, save.
The bare domain, handled properly
The root (apex) name is the part most site builders fumble, because apex names can't hold a plain CNAME at many registrars.
If your registrar offers ALIAS, ANAME, or CNAME flattening (Cloudflare does this automatically), point that at connect.withspacebar.com— it behaves like a CNAME on the apex and stays correct on its own. For every registrar that doesn't offer it, the settings checklist resolves the connect target's current addresses live and shows exact A records for the @ host, ready to copy. No hunting through documentation for IP addresses that may be out of date.
SSL is not your problem
The other classic domain headache is the certificate. Somewhere in most DIY guides you hit certbot, renewal cron jobs, or a paid SSL add-on.
With SPACEBAR there is no step three. Once your DNS records resolve, SSL certificates are issued automatically at the edge — one for the bare domain, one for www. Your site serves over httpswith the padlock, and renewals happen without you. You will never receive a certificate-expiry email, because there's nothing for you to renew.
You can watch it connect
DNS changes propagate on the registrar's schedule, from a few minutes to a few hours. Rather than leave you refreshing your site and guessing, the settings panel shows a live three-step stepper:
- DNS: your record has been found and points to the right place.
- Certificate: the SSL certificate has been issued for your domain.
- Connected: your site is being served on your domain.
SPACEBAR keeps checking in the background and the steps flip as things complete. If something is off, a typo in the record or an old record still sitting on the same host, the error shows up in the panel in plain language instead of failing silently.
When the last step turns green, your domain becomes the canonical address of the site. The sitemap, structured data, and social-preview tags all switch to absolute URLs on your domain, so search engines see one consistent address from day one.
Your registrar's panel, specifically
Every registrar hides the DNS form somewhere different and names the fields something different. The custom domain guide has click-by-click walkthroughs for Cloudflare, Namecheap, GoDaddy, and Squarespace, plus a troubleshooting section for the common failure cases.
The shape is the same everywhere: find the DNS settings for your domain, add the record from your checklist, save. If your registrar isn't listed, the Namecheap steps translate almost directly.
No domain yet? Skip all of this
Every SPACEBAR site publishes to a free address the moment it's ready: yourname.withspacebar.com, with working SSL included. Free sites live there for as long as you like.
That also means you can do this in whatever order suits you. Publish on the free subdomain today, buy the domain next month, connect it when you're ready. Nothing about the site changes when the domain attaches: same content, same page, new address.
Your business deserves its own address. Start free with SPACEBAR, publish on your subdomain, and connect your domain whenever you're ready. The registrar walkthroughs are waiting when you are.