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Every site starts with a free address that always works. To have it answer on a domain you own, open the site, choose Site settings, and under Addresses use Connect a domain. Type the domain — example.com or www.example.com, either works — and press Connect. Settings → Domains is the other way in; it also lists Domains you bought through us. Goosy Bear connects both halves for you: the bare domain (example.com) and www.example.com. www is your site’s main address, and the bare domain sends visitors to it once it is active.

The records to add

Add these at whoever manages your domain’s DNS — usually where you bought the domain, or a host such as Cloudflare or Vercel. The Addresses card shows every record your domain needs, each with its own state, including a certificate record or a CAA record if your domain asks for one. Copy the values from the card rather than from here.

The bare domain

Most DNS providers do not allow a plain CNAME on the bare domain, so they offer a stand-in with its own name:
  • Vercel DNS — an ALIAS record
  • Amazon Route 53 — an alias record
  • Namecheap, GoDaddy and many others — an ALIAS or ANAME record
  • Cloudflare — a normal CNAME, which Cloudflare flattens for you (CNAME flattening)
The card’s Bare domain row lists the type as CNAME or ALIAS. Use the one your provider offers, with the same target as www. If your DNS provider cannot point a bare domain at a name at all, set a redirect (often called forwarding) at your provider or registrar from example.com to https://www.example.com. Your site lives on www, and anyone who types the bare domain lands there. Once your provider is redirecting the bare domain, the card shows it as redirected and asks for nothing more. Either way, www works as soon as its CNAME is in place.

Finishing the connection

After you add or change a record, press Check now on the Addresses card. Goosy checks on its own, and Check now looks again straight away rather than on the next scheduled pass, so a correct record usually turns the domain active within minutes. The steps on the card turn green in order: the record is found, the certificate is issued, and the domain is ready. A ready domain serves your site as soon as the site is published. If the card says your domain currently resolves to a different address, the record at your DNS provider points somewhere else — often a domain still attached to another host keeps serving that host’s records. Update the record there, then press Check now.