Adding a domain to your account
Connecting your domain with Standard Hosting is the easiest and fastest way for you to publish your content made in Vev. We use Netlify's hosting services for static websites, one of the leading cloud computing companies to make sure that your content is served smoothly and securely.
As a rule of thumb, Standard Hosting is the best option if you want your Vev project to be the primary content accessible on a certain domain or sub-domain.
Check the chart below to read some example uses.
Company | Example use |
Start up | Building its website 100% in Vev, e.g: |
Agency | Designing campaigns on behalf of clients in Vev, where each client will have a separate domain/sub-domain, e.g: |
Publisher | Has its existing website built and hosted outside of Vev but is creating some editorials or special editions in Vev. E.g:
|
Brand | Has an existing website outside of Vev but is creating marketing landing pages in Vev, E.g.
|
The Standard Hosting may not be the optimal option if you:
Want to see Vev content embedded in your own pages, e.g. banners.
Want Vev pages to be accessible through a path on an existing website, e.g. www.magazine.com/sports.
Have a complex setup for hosting or need to follow very specific IT policies in your organization.
Wish to host Vev content on your own servers.
Luckily, Vev supports a number of integration options to allow you to extract your content and host it as you please, enabling you to achieve all of the above use cases.
Tip: Vev is not a domain registrar, but you are free to use any DNS provider of your choice to obtain and manage a domain name.
Adding a domain to your account
In the dashboard, click the User tab on the top right corner
Select Hosting
Click on Add domain
Enter your domain or sub-domain (e.g www.mywebsite.com or subdomain.mywebsite.com), there's no need to enter www when connecting a subdomain
Within Access options, toggle if you want to share your domain across your team. It'll be off by default making it only available for you
Click on Add domain
Tip: You can use a Punycode converter if you need to use special letters in your domain, you should enter the output when writing your domain name.
Connecting your domain
Once you've added your domain to your account, the DNS records (A record and CNAME record) will be generated automatically. Think of them as the invisible connectors between your domain name and the Standard Hosting server.
CNAME Record
This will connect your nice-looking domain www.anexample.com to your Standard Hosting server, eliminating the need for the default domain generated by Standard Hosting, which looks like 1g0s30l2f-9u2ij.netlify.app in this example. This way neither you nor your website visitors will have to remember that unfriendly-looking address.
A Record
This will connect the “naked” domain anexample.com (note the missing www) to your server so that the internet knows what you mean when you don't type www before your website’s address. For this type of record, your server will be identified by its IP address, i.e. a series of numbers like 104.198.14.52.
You need to copy both records and add them to your DNS provider's panel to properly connect your domain to Vev. Contact your DNS provider if you are unsure about where to add the records.
Once they have been added, make sure to click Connect domain in the domain settings. If the status on the top changes from Not connected to Connected this means that everything is set up correctly and you can publish your project.
Tip: Keep in mind it may take up to 24 hours for DNS changes to take effect, so be patient if the status doesn't change immediately.
Setting up your domain
Adding a web path
You can add a Path to your domain at the core level, which means it will be used as a base path in all projects that the domain is added to. Follow the steps below to learn how to do it.
In the dashboard, click the User tab on the top right corner
Select Hosting
Select your domain
Enter your path in the Web path field
Adding a favicon
Follow the steps below to learn how to add a Favicon to your domain.
In the dashboard, click the User tab on the top right corner
Select Hosting
Select your domain
Scroll down to the Favicon section
Drag and drop your file or click to upload it from your computer
Tip: We recommend using PNG files.
Adding redirects
If you replace an old URL with a new URL, the old URL may still show up through search results as the site may be mentioned on another website or blog without them knowing you've changed the URL. Any visitors that enter the old URL will be led to a 404 page indicating that the page no longer exists. However, if you set up a redirect, the visitors entering the old URL will be routed to the new URL automatically.
With time, Google and other search engines will index your new URL and the old URLs will eventually be updated. There are 2 types of redirects 301 redirect which is permanent, and 302 redirect which is a temporary relocation, however, 301 redirects are best used if you need to permanently route incoming traffic to a new URL.
Follow the steps below to learn how to add redirects.
In the dashboard, click the User tab on the top right corner
Select Hosting
Select you domain
Scroll down to the Redirects section
Click Add Redirect +
Choose the type of redirect
Enter the old path and the new path, prefixed with a forward slash "/"
Click Save
Publishing to your domain
Once your domain has been properly connected and set you'll need to add it to your project so that you can publish to it. Read the steps below to learn how to do it.
Open the project you want to publish
Click the Publish button on the top right corner
Select Add publish destination from the publish dialog
Choose your domain from the dropdown list
Add a path to your domain or leave it blank if you want to publish to its root (the path will only be added at a project level)
Hit Add publish destination
Open the publish dialog
Hit Publish project
Unpublishing a project
To unpublish your project from a domain:
In the dashboard, click the User tab on the top right corner
Click "Hosting"
Select your domain
Click the "Projects" tab on the top
Click the three dots next to the project you want to unpublish and click "Unpublish".
The project will no longer appear on the list.
SSL certificate
Having the SSL certificate on your projects positively affects its credibility and search engine rankings. Additionally, the SSL certificate provides privacy, critical security, and data integrity. To know if the SSL certificate is generated the URL will be displayed with https:// in the address bar.
Note: After pointing your domain, it takes approximately 5 minutes for the SSL certificate to be up and running.
Re-issue SSL certificate
If you're experiencing any issues in regards to the SSL certificate, you can always re-issue the certificate manually.
Go to the "Dashboard"
Open the burger menu in the top right corner
Click "Hosting"
Find the domain you want to re-issue the SSL certificate to.
Navigate to the "Connect domain" tile
Click "Re-issue SSL"
Troubleshooting
If you set up Standard Hosting but don't add the CNAME around the same time, then the servers (which are trying to validate SSL for your domain) will keep trying to identify the CNAME for a given period of time (around a week or two). When there is no sign of the CNAME, there won't be any SSL certificates generated. So if the servers have given up SSL verifying your site, you can re-trigger it with the "Re-issue" button.
Also, If you set up the right CNAME to the www domain, but fail to add the A-record, you need to re-issue the certificate to make the right changes to the A-record valid.
Make sure your CAA includes “letsencrypt.org” if you have a CAA record (restricts SSL issue providers). https://letsencrypt.org/docs/caa/
Make sure any old DNS pointers for your domain(s) are removed when switching to hosting with Vev. This includes AAAA records (IPV6 Apex record)