Domain name is nothing but your site address in Weebly. The success of your online presence highly depends on choosing a correct domain. Though you can purchase a domain from Weebly, we recommend purchasing from cheap registrars like GoDaddy. After purchasing a domain, you need to connect your GoDaddy domain to Weebly in order for the site to show your content.
Weebly Domain
Weebly offers three ways to connect your site to a domain name.
- Use a free Weebly subdomain
- Register a new domain name with Weebly
- Connect your own domain
Free subdomain is not a good option for your growing online presence and registering a new domain with Weebly is also a costlier option. Hence, the ideal option is to register a domain with other registrars like GoDaddy for comparatively cheap price and pointing it to your free site hosted with Weebly using the third option. This article explains the step by step process of connecting your free Weebly site to a GoDaddy hosted domain or subdomain.
Note: Custom domain name is still a free option for old Weebly accounts, but you should upgrade to Weebly starter or Pro plan for the accounts created relatively new. Weebly did not mention at what point of time this change was effective.
Step1 – Getting the IP address of Weebly Server
The first step is to get the IP address of the Weebly server to configure it in the DNS record of your domain. Publish your Weebly site to see various domain options and enter your domain or subdomain name in the last option “Connect a Domain You Already Own” as shown in the below picture.
Click on the “Continue” button to see two options. Option A is the sample mail for sending to your registrar to do the DNS changes for you and option B is the instruction on how to do the changes on your own. Click on the “see instructions” link to view the complete procedure for option B. Note down the IP address shown under “Point to” column which is the IP address of your Weebly server.
Step2 – Edit DNS Zone File
Login to your GoDaddy account and launch the domain you want to connect to your Weebly site. Click on the “Edit” button under “DNS Zone File” tab as shown in the below picture.
If you want to connect your subdomain then click on the “Quick Add” button to enter the subdomain name you provided with Weebly and the Weebly server IP address noted down in the previous step1. You can also enter the IP address in the “Points to” column of the first “A Record” with the host “@” in order to connect your main domain.
Save you Zone File and it may take up to 48 hours for the changes to get reflected. Publish your Weebly site to see your site can be successfully published.
That’s it!!! Now your site is pointing to your GoDaddy domain or subdomain and users will only see your GoDaddy domain address visible in the browser. Checkout the video presentation to see the demo.
Hi, just to clarify, does this apply to weebly accounts with the FREE plan (not the starter, pro plan, etc.)? Or do we need to switch the free plan to any premium plans first to be able to do this? Thanks!
You at least need a starter plan to use custom domain.
Great thanks