Your shop page

Put your shop on your own web address

7 minute read

Your shop always works at its broidry.com address, and that address never stops working. If you own a domain, you can also have your shop answer there, so customers see your name instead of ours. This is included on the Shop plan.

Three things have to line up: one or two records you add at your domain company, an approval on our end, and the secure-site certificate. None of them are hard, but they happen in order, and the whole thing usually takes a day.

Read this part before you start, because it is the thing almost everyone is surprised by. Your bare domain — yourname.com — and the www version of it — www.yourname.com — are two separate records at your domain company. Adding one does not add the other. If you set up yourname.com and then type www.yourname.com and get an error, nothing is broken: that second address simply has no record yet. The next section gives you both.

Start in Broidry

  1. 1Open Storefront in your dashboard and find the card called Your own domain.
  2. 2Type the domain you want to use and tap Save domain. Enter just the address itself, with no https:// in front and nothing after the ending — shop.yourname.com, not https://shop.yourname.com/.
  3. 3You will see a note saying your domain is waiting for Broidry approval. That is expected, and the next two steps happen while it waits.
The Your own domain card on the Storefront page, with a box for typing your domain and a Save domain button.
The card you are looking for, near the bottom of Storefront → Your shop.
Note: Save ONE address here, not two. If you want customers to reach you at yourname.com, save exactly that — we serve the www version of it automatically once its record exists, so there is nothing to add here for it. Saving a second address does not add it, it REPLACES the one already there and puts your live address back to waiting, so your shop stops answering until we approve it again.

First, find out where your domain's records actually live

Before you add anything, one check that saves people the most grief: the company you bought the domain from is not always the company that controls its records. Every domain has a setting called nameservers that says which company answers questions about it, and records only count at the company the nameservers point to. A record added anywhere else does nothing, forever, with no error to tell you so.

The usual reason they point somewhere else is that the domain was connected to a website builder at some point — Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Weebly — or moved onto Cloudflare. If you ever connected this domain to a site builder, that builder probably controls the records now, and this whole setup happens in the builder's dashboard instead of at the company you pay for the domain.

You can check in half a minute. Open your domain company's page for the domain and look for the word Nameservers. If it says something like default or the company's own name, you are in the right place — add the records there. If it names a different company — cloudflare.com, wixdns.net, squarespace.com — go add the records at that company instead.

Note: None of this changes your email. The records in this guide only steer where the website part of your domain points. Your email runs on a different kind of record (called MX) that this setup never touches, so adding these will not break your email address.

The three addresses, and the record each one needs

Every record you add has the same three parts: a type, a name, and a value. Find the address shape you want below and copy its three parts exactly. Most shops want the first two, which means adding two records — one for the bare address and one for the www version.

For yourname.com with nothing in front, the type is A, the name is @, and the value is 216.24.57.1. The @ means the domain itself. Some companies want the name field left empty instead; either is fine, and they mean the same thing.

For www.yourname.com, the type is CNAME, the name is www, and the value is broidry.onrender.com. Just the word www in the name field, not the whole address.

For a subdomain like shop.yourname.com, the type is CNAME, the name is shop, and the value is broidry.onrender.com. Put only the part in front — the word shop on its own.

That value, broidry.onrender.com, is not a typo and it is not the address you type to visit Broidry. It is the address of the server that runs Broidry shops, and it is the value our host asks for. It looks wrong the first time everyone sees it, and it is correct.

Note: A bare domain cannot use a CNAME. Most domain companies refuse it outright, and the ones that allow it can break your email. That is why the bare address uses an A record with a number, and the www version uses a CNAME with a name — two different types on purpose.

Add the record at your domain company

Your domain company is whoever you bought the domain from and pay to renew it — GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace, Wix, Google Domains, Cloudflare, or another. This step happens on their website, not in Broidry.

  1. 1Sign in to your domain company and find your domain's DNS settings. Different companies label this differently: DNS, DNS Management, Manage DNS, Advanced DNS, Nameservers and DNS, or Records. They all mean the same screen.
  2. 2Look at what is already there before adding anything. Most domains do not start empty — companies pre-fill records that point new domains at a parked or coming-soon page, and a name can only point one way. If a record already exists on the name you need — an A record on @, or a CNAME on www — EDIT that record and replace its value with ours, or delete it and then add ours. Do not leave the old one sitting next to the new one, and if the site refuses with an error like record already exists, that is what it is telling you: edit, don't add.
  3. 3Now add (or edit into place) the record, with the type from the section above — A for the bare address, CNAME for www or a subdomain.
  4. 4Fill in the name box. Some companies call it Host, Hostname, or Alias. Only the part in front goes here — @, or www, or shop — never the whole address.
  5. 5Fill in the value box. GoDaddy calls this box Data. Other companies call it Points to, Target, Destination, Content, or Answer. They all mean the same box.
  6. 6Leave the TTL setting alone. Whatever it already says is fine.
  7. 7Save the record.
  8. 8If you want both yourname.com and www.yourname.com to work, go back and add the second record now. Adding the first one does not add the second, and there is no setting that covers both.
Note: Two switches can fight your new records without showing you any error, so check both are off. If your domain has Forwarding or Redirect turned on (common at GoDaddy and Namecheap), turn it off — forwarding plants its own records that send visitors somewhere else. And if your company offers a proxy or CDN toggle on the record — Cloudflare calls it the orange cloud — set it to DNS only. Leaving the proxy on stops the secure certificate from being issued.

Where the DNS screen is at each company

Same job everywhere, different labels. Find your company below for the click path and what it calls the two boxes.

GoDaddy: sign in, open My Products, and pick DNS next to the domain. The name box is Name, the value box is Data. New GoDaddy domains come with a parked A record already sitting on @ — edit that record and put 216.24.57.1 in Data, rather than adding a second one.

Namecheap: Domain List, then Manage next to the domain, then the Advanced DNS tab. The name box is Host and the value box is Value. It too usually starts with a parking record or a URL redirect record on @ — remove those, and check the Redirect Domain section is empty.

Squarespace (including domains moved over from Google Domains): Settings, then Domains, pick the domain, then DNS Settings, and add under Custom Records. The boxes are Host and Data.

Cloudflare: pick the domain, then the DNS tab. The boxes are Name and Target (or IPv4 address for an A record). On every record you add for this, click the orange cloud so Proxy status reads DNS only — this is the one company where that toggle exists and defaults to on.

Wix: if your domain is at Wix, go to your account's Domains page, pick the domain, and look for Manage DNS Records under the three-dot menu. The boxes are Host Name and Value.

Shopify: domains bought through Shopify are managed under Settings, then Domains — open the domain and edit its DNS settings. The boxes are Name and Points to.

Hostinger: hPanel, then Domains, pick the domain, then DNS / Nameservers. The boxes are Name and Points to (called Content on some record types).

Porkbun: open the domain's Details and pick Edit next to DNS Records. The boxes are Host and Answer. Porkbun pre-fills new domains with two parking records — an ALIAS on the bare domain and a CNAME on the wildcard — delete both before adding yours.

Note: Not on this list? Every company has the same three boxes under one of the names above. Search their help site for the phrase add an A record and the screen it shows you is the one you want.

Check your own work — before waiting, and before emailing us

You do not have to guess whether your record took. A free checker site can read your domain's records from all over the world and show you exactly what the internet sees, which tells you whose court the ball is in.

Go to dnschecker.org, type the exact address you set up — yourname.com for the bare record, www.yourname.com for the www one — pick the record type (A or CNAME) from the dropdown, and press Search.

If most of the map shows the right value — 216.24.57.1 for the A record, broidry.onrender.com for the CNAME — your side is done and correct. Anything still in the way is either the spread finishing or our approval step, and both clear on their own.

If the map shows nothing, the record does not exist yet at the company your nameservers point to — go back one section and check you added it in the right place, on the right name.

If the map shows a different value, an old record won — usually the parking record the company pre-filled. Go back and edit or delete it.

Check both addresses separately. The bare address and the www version are separate records, so one can be perfect while the other has nothing at all.

Note: This one check answers the question we would otherwise go back and forth about by email. If dnschecker shows the right value on both addresses and it has been a day, THAT is the moment to email us — and tell us you checked, because then we know the remaining step is ours.

What happens next, and how long it takes

Once a record is saved, it has to spread across the internet before anyone can use it. That takes anywhere from a few minutes to a full day, and there is nothing to do but wait.

Meanwhile, we approve your claim. We look at every new domain to be sure it belongs to the shop that added it, so nobody can connect an address they do not own. We also finish the piece that only we can do: registering your domain on the server that answers for it and issuing the secure-site certificate, which is what puts the padlock in the address bar.

When all of that is done, the waiting-for-approval note on your Storefront card goes away and your shop answers at your own address. Your broidry.com link keeps working the whole time, so nothing is ever down for your customers.

Note: While your claim is still waiting for approval, your address will show a page-not-found rather than your shop, even though the record is right. That is expected and it clears on its own.

If it is not working yet

Almost every problem is one of these, listed in the order they actually happen. The checker in the section above sorts you into the right one in about a minute.

  1. 1It has not been a full day yet. A new record can take that long to spread, and nothing you do speeds it up.
  2. 2The www version has no record. If yourname.com opens your shop and www.yourname.com does not — or the other way around — that is the missing second record, not a broken setup. Each address needs its own.
  3. 3The whole address went in the name box. The name box takes only the part in front — @, or www, or shop. Putting www.yourname.com there makes an address like www.yourname.com.yourname.com, which is the single most common mistake.
  4. 4An old record won. The parking record your domain company pre-filled is still there next to yours, or still there instead of yours. dnschecker.org showing a value that is not ours is this one — edit or delete the old record.
  5. 5The records went to the wrong company. If your nameservers point at a website builder or Cloudflare, records added at the company you bought the domain from do nothing. Check the first-find-out section above.
  6. 6Forwarding or a proxy is on. Domain forwarding sends visitors somewhere else no matter what your records say, and Cloudflare's orange-cloud proxy blocks the secure certificate. Both need to be off.
  7. 7The claim is still waiting on us, so the address shows a page-not-found even though the records are right. Your Storefront card shows when it is still waiting on approval, and you get an email from us the moment it is approved.
  8. 8The certificate is still being issued, so the browser shows a security warning instead of your shop. This is the last step and it clears on its own within a few hours of everything else being right.
Note: If you have been through this list, dnschecker.org shows the right value on both addresses, and a full day has passed, email hello@broidry.com with your domain and the name of your domain company — and say you checked. At that point the remaining step is ours, and we will finish it.