Show your Store at your own domain

Your Store always has a Magpie address. You can also show it at a domain you own, such as shop.example.com or example.com. Team admins set this up.

Connect a domain

1. In Store settings, open Custom domain.
2. Enter the address, such as shop.example.com, and click Connect.
3. Add the records Magpie shows where you manage DNS for your domain, usually the company you bought the domain from.

The records are:

• A TXT record named _magpie-verify that proves the domain belongs to your team. It is not shown once the domain is already verified, for example because you use it for Mail. Magpie checks it once, so removing it later changes nothing.
• For a subdomain such as shop.example.com, a CNAME record pointing to the name Magpie shows.
• For a whole domain such as example.com, an ALIAS record pointing to the same name. Some DNS providers call it ANAME or CNAME flattening. If yours has neither, add the A record shown below the table instead.

These records only change where your website is. Your MX records and other records stay as they are, so email at the domain keeps working.

Names are shown relative to your domain. If your DNS provider asks for the full name, add your domain to the end, such as shop.example.com.

The line under the steps says where DNS for the domain is: hosted by Magpie, or at another provider, with its nameservers. That is where the records go.

www and the whole domain

Connecting a whole domain such as example.com also answers at www.example.com, and visitors there are sent to example.com. Also answer at www.example.com on the Custom domain page turns this off. The www address has its own CNAME record in the table and its own state: nothing is sent there until its record is right, and a problem with it does not affect example.com.

Connecting www.example.com offers Also send example.com here, off by default, with the record it needs. Disconnecting the address disconnects this second address too.

If Magpie hosts your DNS

If you moved your domain's DNS to Magpie, the page shows Add the records for me. Click it and Magpie adds them. If records with the same names are already there, Magpie lists them and asks before replacing them.

While you wait

Magpie checks the address in the background. The Custom domain page updates by itself when something changes, so you can leave it open or come back to it later. Click Check now to check at once.

The top of the page shows where the address stands: Not live yet, Live, or Problem found. Under it are the three steps to finish: prove the domain is your team's, point the address to Magpie, and the security certificate Magpie gets. A step the last check found done has a tick, and the next step to finish is marked.

Each record in the table shows what the last check found: Found, Not found, or Wrong value. A record stays in the table once it is found. For a wrong value, the value Magpie found is shown under the one to add, so you can compare them for a typo. Before the first check, a record shows Not checked. You can add the records in any order.

After the records are found, Magpie gets a security certificate for the address. This usually takes a few minutes. The page then shows Live.

DNS changes can take up to a day to reach everyone, but most take minutes.

On your own domain

Your products, collections, cart and checkout work at the new address, and customers who pay come back to it. Order emails and order pages still use the Magpie address.

Once the domain is live, pages at your Magpie address open the same page at your domain, so links people already have keep working. A cart or checkout started at the Magpie address finishes there, and anyone signed in to Magpie stays at the Magpie address, where their wishlist is. To show your Store at both addresses instead, turn off Magpie address on the Custom domain page.

While one of your websites shows your Store (see Show your Store in your website), the domain stays connected and sends visitors to the same page on the website; the Custom domain page and the DNS page say so. When the website stops showing the Store, the domain shows your Store's own pages again.

If the records cannot be found

A live domain stays connected. If a later check cannot find its records, Magpie keeps showing your Store at the domain, and the Custom domain page shows Problem found and what the check found. Until a check finds the records again, the Magpie address shows your Store itself instead of opening the domain.

If the problem lasts 24 hours, Magpie emails your team's admins, and once more after 7 days. When the records are back, the problem clears by itself.

Disconnect

Click Disconnect to stop showing your Store at the address. Remove the records at your DNS provider afterwards if you no longer need them. If Magpie hosts your DNS, the records it added for the Store are removed with it.

The domain itself stays in DNS and Mail. It cannot be removed there while the Store is connected at an address under it.

If the page still shows a problem a day after you added the records, check that the names and values match exactly. If they do, Contact support.