Your website address and your own domain name

Every Nowistay website has a free address such as yourname.nowistay.page. You can change it at any time, and once the site is published you can also open it on your own domain name, such as www.yourdomain.com, by adding two records at the company where you bought the domain.

Your free nowistay.page address

You choose the address when you create the website, in the Web address field of the Your website step. Your site then lives at yourname.nowistay.page.

The rules for the part before .nowistay.page:

• 3 to 40 characters: lowercase letters, digits and hyphens;
• no hyphen at the start or the end, no two hyphens in a row;
• a few common words are reserved, such as www, blog, help, admin or mail;
• names of booking platforms, hotel chains and payment services are refused, even written with digits instead of letters. For example villa-booking or my-b00king-villa are refused with “This address contains a brand you can’t use. Choose another one.”

When the address you type is taken, Nowistay suggests a free one next to Available:. Click it to use it.

Change your address

1. In the editor, open the … menu and choose Site settings.
2. In Web address, type the new address. Nowistay checks it as you type.
3. Click Change the address.
4. If your site is published, a window asks Change the website’s address? and explains that the old address will redirect to the new one for 12 months, and that the site is put back online with its links updated in a few minutes. Confirm.
5. The editor confirms Address changed.

What happens to the old address:

• For 12 months, anyone who opens it lands on your new address, on the same page. Links shared in old e-mails, on social media or on Google keep working.
• During those 12 months, nobody else can take it. You can take it back yourself.
• After 12 months, the redirect stops and the address becomes free again.

Example: you created gites-moulin.nowistay.page, then renamed your business Le Moulin des Trois Gîtes. You change the address to moulin-des-trois-gites.nowistay.page. Guests who saved the old link from last summer’s confirmation e-mail still reach your site, and you have a year to update your social media profiles and e-mail signature.

If your site is offline when you change the address, its links are updated at your next publish. If your own domain is connected, your site stays on your domain: the new nowistay.page address simply leads to it.

Connect your own domain name

You buy a domain name from a registrar (a company that sells domain names). Nowistay doesn’t sell domains. Then you connect it in the editor.

Before you start:

• your website must be published: until then, the panel says “Publish your website first to connect your domain to it.”;
• the website must be in your subscription;
• a website has one domain at a time.

Why www.yourdomain.com and not yourdomain.com

Your site needs a CNAME record, a record that points your address to Nowistay. Domain name rules don’t allow a CNAME on the bare domain (yourdomain.com), so Nowistay uses an address with a prefix, usually www. If you type the bare domain, the app answers “Use a www address (for example www.my-rental.com): your registrar can forward the bare domain to it.”

So that visitors who type yourdomain.com still find you, set up forwarding at your registrar:

1. Sign in to your registrar and open your domain’s settings.
2. Find the option called “Redirect”, “Forwarding” or “Web forwarding”.
3. Forward yourdomain.com to https://www.yourdomain.com, as a permanent redirect if you are asked.
4. Save. Leave your www records untouched.

If your registrar doesn’t offer forwarding, ask its support team.

Step 1: enter your domain

1. In the editor, open the … menu and choose Domain name.
2. In Your domain, type your address with www, for example www.yourdomain.com. You can paste a full link: Nowistay keeps only the address.
3. Click Connect.

The panel then shows Add these records at your registrar with two cards. Each card gives a Name and a Value, with a Copy button next to each.

Step 2: add the two records at your registrar

• TXT record: proves the domain is yours. Its name and value are given by the app. The value is new each time you connect a domain, so always copy it from the panel.
• CNAME record: points your www address to Nowistay. Its name is your prefix (www) and its value is domains.nowistay.page.

Many registrars want the name without your domain (for example www): that’s why the app shows the short name first, with the full name under it.

1. Sign in to your registrar and open the DNS settings of your domain (often called “DNS zone”, “DNS records” or “Manage DNS”).
2. Add a record of type TXT. Paste the Name and the Value from the app.
3. Add a record of type CNAME. Name: www. Value: domains.nowistay.page.
4. If a www record already exists (often a parking page from the registrar, or your old website), delete it or change it into the CNAME above: www can’t point to two places.
5. Save. Keep the other settings at their default values.

A worked example

You rent three gîtes in the Dordogne under the name Le Moulin des Trois Gîtes. Your site is at moulin-des-trois-gites.nowistay.page, and you just bought moulin-des-trois-gites.com.

1. In Domain name, you type www.moulin-des-trois-gites.com and click Connect.
2. At your registrar, you add the two records exactly as the panel shows them:

Type	Name	Value
TXT	the name shown in the panel (copy it)	the value shown in the panel (copy it)
CNAME	www	domains.nowistay.page

3. You delete the old www record that showed the registrar’s parking page.
4. You forward moulin-des-trois-gites.com to https://www.moulin-des-trois-gites.com.
5. Back in Nowistay, the panel shows Waiting for your DNS records. A little later it shows Records found: your domain is almost ready, then “Your website is online at www.moulin-des-trois-gites.com”.

How long it takes, and what each status means

After you click Connect, Nowistay checks your records every 5 minutes during the first hour, then every hour, for up to 14 days. The panel shows the end date: “We check automatically until” followed by the date. To check at once, click Check now.

Status in the panel	What it means	What to do
Waiting for your DNS records	Nowistay can’t see your records yet. A line says which one: “The CNAME is not visible yet.” or “The TXT is not visible yet.”	Check the record at your registrar. Changes can take up to a few hours to show.
Records found: your domain is almost ready	Both records are found. The security certificate (the padlock of https) is being created.	Nothing. Your site opens on your domain in a few minutes and Nowistay lets you know.
Your website is online at your domain	Your domain is connected.	Keep both records at your registrar.
Your domain no longer points to your website	It worked, but your records are no longer found.	Check them at your registrar. After 7 days, your website goes back to its nowistay.page address.
Your records were not found within 14 days	The checks have stopped.	Click Try again, then connect the domain again (you get a new TXT value).

Nowistay also sends you a notification when the domain is connected (“Your domain is connected”), when it stops pointing to your site for 24 hours, and when the records were not found within 14 days.

If the panel says “A CAA record on your domain blocks the certificate: allow letsencrypt.org and pki.goog, or remove it.”, your domain has a CAA record that limits who may create certificates for it. Add those two names to it at your registrar, or delete it.

After your domain is connected

• Your site opens on https://www.yourdomain.com.
• Your nowistay.page address keeps working: it leads visitors to your domain, and so do your older addresses.
• The links inside your site use your domain.
• Statistics count the visits on both addresses.
• E-mail addresses on your domain are not affected: the two records only concern the www address.
• Keep both records at your registrar. If you delete them, the domain stops showing your site.

Remove a domain

1. Open Domain name in the … menu.
2. Click Remove the domain.
3. A window asks Remove the domain? and reminds you that your website goes back to its nowistay.page address and that you can connect a domain again later. Confirm.
4. The editor confirms Domain removed.

Your site is back on its nowistay.page address, with its links updated. You can then delete the two records at your registrar. To switch to another domain, remove the current one first, then connect the new one.

Common mistakes

• Typing the domain without www. Use www.yourdomain.com and forward the bare domain at your registrar.
• Typing the full name in the Name field. If your registrar adds your domain by itself, www.yourdomain.com becomes www.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com. Type the short name shown in the app.
• Leaving an old www record. A parking page or an old website record on www stops the CNAME from working. Delete it.
• Adding the records in the wrong place. If your domain’s DNS is managed by another company (for example the host of your former website), add the records there, not at the registrar.
• Deleting the records once it works. Both must stay, or the domain stops pointing to your site.
• Connecting before publishing. Publish the site first; see Publish your website and put changes online.
• Using a domain already connected elsewhere. “That domain is already used by another website.” If it is on another of your websites, remove it there first.
• Trying too often. You can connect up to 5 domains per account in 24 hours, and Check now has a limit too. Past it, the app says “Too many attempts. Try again later.”