Connect a Custom Domain to your Hub

Step 1 - Enter your purchased Domain in Cloudflare

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

1. Select the Free plan and click Continue.

   

    

   A quick scan will then look for any existing DNS records for your domain and begin to 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 and we will add the records later.

   

Step 3 - Change nameservers from your domain provider

In this step, you’ll see instructions on how to change 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 up in Cloudflare.

To initiate a nameserver check, click Check nameservers.

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

Once the nameservers are updated properly, a confirmation that your site is now protected by Cloudflare will show.

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 own 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 and type in the following:
Type: CNAME
Name: searchie.support
Target: ingress.searchie.io and then, hit Save.

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

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:
Type: CNAME
Name: hub (or subdomain name of your choice)
Target: ingress.searchie.io and then hit Save.

Step 6 - Add page rule to redirect 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 in order to view the Hub.

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

2. Type in this information to 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 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! 🎉