Connect a Custom Domain to your Hub

Configure your domain settings to point your domain name to your Searchie Hub

🧰 What You Will Need

  1. A Domain

  2. A free Cloudflare account to manage your domain

  3. A Searchie Hub to use with your domain

What can I use this for?

Connecting a custom domain to your Searchie Hub is essential for enhancing your brand’s visibility and professionalism by using a personalized web address. This process ensures your Hub is easily recognizable and accessible to your audience.

NOTE: This process involves pointing your nameservers (changing your domain name's NS records) to Cloudflare. If you have a Wix site/domain, you won't be able to change your nameservers as stated in their public documentation. For more information, contact Wix.

Step 1 - Enter your purchased Domain in Cloudflare

NOTE: We used the domain name "searchie.support" in these examples. You will have to replace this with your domain name.

Inside your Cloudflare account, enter the domain you want to connect to your Hub and click
Add site.

Step 2 - Select the free plan and wait for the quick scan

Select the Free plan and click Continue.

 

A quick scan will then look for any existing DNS records for your domain and migrate them over. This quick scan is helpful if you have already used this domain for another site.

After the scan, click Continue.

Click Confirm to skip this step for now; we will add the records later.

Step 3 - Change nameservers from your domain provider

In this step, you’ll see instructions on changing your nameservers based on your domain provider. For this example, the domain was purchased from Namecheap.

Once you have changed your nameservers as described, go back to your Cloudflare account and click Done, check nameservers.

Step 4 - Check for the nameserver update on Cloudflare

This process can take up to 24 hours to update. You will receive an email notification when your site is active and already up on Cloudflare.

To initiate a nameserver check, click Check nameservers.

A message will show that Cloudflare is now checking the nameservers.

You will receive a confirmation that your website is now secure and protected by Cloudflare once the nameservers have been updated correctly.

Step 5 - Using a root domain or subdomain

REMINDER: searchie.support is the domain used in these examples. You will have to replace this with your domain.

Decide whether you want to point the root domain “searchie.support” to your Hub directly or to use a subdomain “hub.searchie.support”.

Using the root domain

On your DNS settings, click + Add Record, type in the following, and hit Save afterward:
Type: CNAME
Name: searchie.support
Target: ingress.searchie.io

Click + Add Record to add another record and type in the following before clicking Save:
Type: CNAME
Name: www
Target: ingress.searchie.io

Your DNS records should have these two:

Adding a subdomain

NOTE: Using a subdomain, your audience will not be able to access your Hub by putting "www." at the start of it. "hub." replaces the "www." prefix in your URL.

Click + Add Record to add another record and type in the following before clicking Save:
Type: CNAME
Name: hub (or subdomain name of your choice)
Target: ingress.searchie.io

Step 6 - Add page rule to redirect subdomain "www"

Searchie only allows one domain to be assigned to your Hub. This means if you access "www.searchie.support", it needs to be redirected to searchie.support to view the Hub.

  1. Go to the Rules page and click Create Page Rule.

  2. Type in this information in the following fields:
    URL: www.searchie.support/*
    Setting: Forwarding URL
    Status Code: 301 - Permanent Redirect
    Destination URL: https://searchie.support/$1

  3. Then, click Save and Deploy Page Rule.

Step 7 - Set the SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full

Go to the SSL/TLS page and select Full as your encryption mode.

Step 8 - Add your domain to your Searchie Hub

If using a root domain, you will enter the root domain only (without "www") and hit Save.

If using a subdomain, enter the full domain and hit Save.

 

Hooray! Test your Hub now with your new domain! 🎉