Take your website live

Every new website starts on a preview address. When the site is ready, you point your domain at the server and Netkeel moves the site onto it.

1. Check the site on its preview address

Open the website. The banner at the top links to its preview address. Click through the important pages before you change anything for visitors.

2. Find your server’s address

The banner shows the address to use, for example “point its A record to 203.0.113.10”. You can also find it as IPv4 under the server’s Overview, in Server details.

3. Point your domain at the server

Sign in where your domain’s DNS is managed (often the company you bought the domain from) and set:

• an A record for your domain, pointing to the server’s IPv4 address
• for www, an A record pointing to the same address, if you want www to work

Remove any other A or AAAA records for the domain that point somewhere else. DNS records has the details.

DNS changes can take from a few minutes to several hours to spread.

4. Take it live

What you click depends on how you created the website.

You entered a domain when you created the site. The banner says “This website is on its preview address”.

1. Click Take live.
2. Confirm with Take live in the dialog.

You started without a domain. The banner says “Running on” the preview address.

1. Type your domain without www, for example example.com.
2. Leave Also www ticked if www points to the server too.
3. Click Connect domain.

Netkeel first checks that your domain points to the server. If it does not yet, you see a message with the address it should point to. Fix the record, wait a few minutes and try again.

When the check passes, Netkeel issues a free Let’s Encrypt certificate and moves the site to https:// your domain, including links in your content. This takes a minute or two and you can leave the page.

After it is live

• Your site answers on your domain with HTTPS.
• The preview address keeps working and sends visitors on to your domain.
• Certificates renew automatically.

Tip

Take live includes www in the certificate when www already points to the server. If it doesn’t yet, request a new certificate with Also include www once www points to the server or goes through your proxy or CDN. See SSL certificates.