How to Use a Custom Domain on Blue Market

Using your custom domain with your Blue Market site is simple, but must be done correctly to avoid breaking your site.

To use a custom domain with your Blue Market website, you must have previously purchased a domain through a domain name registrar, such as a Godaddy.com or Google Domains. You may also purchase a custom domain through the Blue Market Business Hub.

Additionally, before directing your custom domain to your Blue Market Website, you should make sure you’ve gone through your website and added all of the text and pages you want on your site when your custom domain goes live.

Finally, you should be ready for your site to be unavailable while the internet redirects your domain name to your new site, and an SSL certificate for your domain is generated.

This article will outline the following steps for setting up your custom domain on your Blue Market website:

1. Login to your domain registrar and create A records
2. Login to your Blue Market website and add your domain
3. That’s it!

1. Login to your domain registrar and create A records

Your domain registrar is the business where you purchased your domain. Some companies operate primarily as a domain registrar (such as Godaddy.com) while others provide hosting or website creation services and sell domains as part of their offering (like Wix.com or Bluehost). Still, other companies like Google have gotten in on the domain name registration game with services like Google Domains.

Not all domain registrars are created equal. If you have not yet purchased your custom domain name, we recommend that you purchase either via the Blue Market Business Hub, or via Godaddy.com or Google Domains.

After you’ve purchased a domain name, you’ll need to login to your registrar and find where you can manage your domain name servers, or DNS–look for links that say things like “Manage DNS.”

Each registrar is different, so you’ll have to find the area where you can add custom records. In Google domains it’s an area called “Custom resource records.” Once there, you need to create TWO (2) separate “A” records.

The first “A” record will be for your primary domain. Often, you’ll indicate that an “A” record is for the primary domain by leaving the “hostname” field blank or by placing an at symbol (@). Then, you’ll put the bluemarketpro.com IP address in the IP field, and add the record.

The second “A” record you’ll create will be for the “www” version of your domain. This time, in the “hostname” field you will add the letters “www”. You’ll still put the bluemarketpro.com IP address in the IP field, and add the record.

In Google Domains, your Custom resource records should look like the following screenshot:

If you fail to create BOTH “A” records–one for your primary domain, and one for the www version–then your SSL certificate will not be autogenerated, and your site may be unavailable until you add both “A” records.

2. Login to your Blue Market website and add your domain

Now head over to your Blue Market website, and click on the link in your menu for “Account.” You should see the following page:

Once there, you should type your custom domain name into the field inside the box labelled “Custom Domain.” Type your domain exactly as the example text is formatted; meaning, type your domain without prefixes like “http://” or “www.”

After that, click on the button to “Set Custom Domain.”

When you click the button a warning box will appear verifying that you’ve gone through these two steps. It will also link to this article. Feel free to double check that you’ve set everything up right, and then click “OK.”

3. That’s it!

Once you click OK, your website will begin the process of connecting to your custom domain. An SSL certificate will autogenerate and install at your custom domain as well.

SSL stands for (Secure Sockets Layer) and is an important security feature that encrypts connections between your website and your website visitors. A valid SSL certificate is required to conduct e-commerce transactions on your site, and it is an important and growing factor in SEO as well.

Because it takes time to direct traffic from your custom domain to your Blue Market website, and to install a valid SSL certificate, your site will be unavailable for a short time.

While it can technically take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours for DNS information to propagate throughout the internet, in our experience, if your site is unavailable for more than an hour or two, you may have made a mistake during steps 1 or 2 above.

Please double-check your work.

If your site continues to be unavailable, feel free to make a support ticket.

Conclusion

We hope this guide has been helpful in connecting your custom domain to your Blue Market website. Should you have any problems in accomplishing either of these two steps, open a support ticket and we will troubleshoot the issue with you.