Any other company

Your domain company is not on my list

There are hundreds of them and the job is the same at every one. Two lines get added to your domain's settings, and your new site starts answering at your real web address instead of a preview link. This page figures out which company you are dealing with, then gives you two ways to get those two lines in.

Takes about ten minutes.

First, work out who you pay for the domain

Most people do not know off the top of their head, and that is normal. The domain was often set up years ago by whoever built the last site, and it has been renewing on its own ever since.

Search your email for the word renewal
Search your inbox for renewal plus your web address. Whoever bills you once a year for somewhere around fifteen or twenty dollars is your domain company. Worth checking your card statement too. The charge is small enough to scroll straight past.
Or look it up at lookup.icann.org
ICANN keeps the public record of every domain on the internet, so this works even if you have lost every email you ever had. Type in your web address without the www.
lookup.icann.org
Domain Name: yourdomain.com
Registrar: the company you pay every year
Registrar Abuse Contact
Updated Date
Name Servers: who actually answers for your DNS
The report runs long and most of it is not for you. Two lines matter. Registrar is the company you renew with. Name Servers tells us where your DNS settings actually live, which is not always the same company.
Send me those two lines
The registrar name and the nameservers. With those I can tell you in one message whether that company lets you invite me in, and which screen your DNS is really on. That is usually faster than hunting for it.
Why both lines: the company you renew with and the company that answers for your DNS are not always the same one. If an old web person pointed your nameservers at their own host years ago, your renewal company still owns the domain, but its DNS page is no longer the live one.

Do not change your nameservers

Somewhere in that account is a section called Nameservers, and it usually sits right next to the DNS records. They are not the same thing, and the difference matters more than anything else on this page.

Adding two DNS records changes where your website answers. Nothing else moves. Changing nameservers hands your whole domain to a different company, and every record goes with it, including the MX records that carry your email. If those are not rebuilt on the other side first, your mail stops arriving that hour and nothing warns you. I have watched a business lose its email this way. I am not doing it to you.

There is a second trap on the way back out. Once your nameservers point somewhere else, the DNS page you are used to at your domain company is no longer the live one. Edits made there look like they saved and do nothing at all.

So if anything you read anywhere tells you to point nameservers at Vercel or at Cloudflare, stop and text me first. The two records further down do the entire job without touching them. On the rare build where I genuinely need a nameserver change, I copy your email records across before we switch, and we do it together on the phone.

Then pick one of two ways

Option 1 is faster. Option 2 keeps me out of your account entirely. Both end with your site live and I do not have a preference, so pick whichever one you are comfortable with.

Option 1. Invite me into your account

Most domain companies let you add another person to your account without handing over your password. The annoying part is that there is no standard name for the feature, so you are hunting for a word rather than following a set path.

Look in your account settings for one of these words
delegate, delegate access, manager, collaborator, team, users, permissions, sharing, share access, sub-account, contacts. One of those, or something close to it, is the feature. It usually lives under Account Settings or your profile menu, and sometimes on a tab attached to the domain itself.
Account settings
Your accountSettings
Profile
Billing and payment methods
Security
Users and sharing
Notifications
Every company draws and names this differently. You are hunting for the row about people, not the row about payment. If nothing on the menu looks like it, the feature probably is not there, and Option 2 below is your path.
Invite jake@localcraftdigital.com
Use that address exactly. Most companies invite by email. A few invite by username instead, and if yours asks for a username and refuses an email address, text me and I will send you the right one.
Pick the smallest level that reaches DNS
You will usually be asked to choose an access level, and the names are different everywhere. Read the description next to each one and give me the lowest one that covers DNS records or domain management. The note under this list says which words mean stop.
Tell me it is sent, then take it back when the site is live
Invitations often expire in a day or two, so a quick text saves us a round trip. Once the site is up you can remove me from the same screen you added me on. I will not be offended. If you would rather leave it in place so I can fix things fast later, that is your call too.

Which level to give me, and which to refuse

I need exactly one thing: the ability to edit DNS records for your domain. Nothing else on that list is for me.

Fine to give me: whatever your company calls DNS access, domain management, or technical contact. If there is only one general level and no detail, the lowest one that still reaches the DNS screen is the right pick.

Do not give me: any level whose description mentions billing, purchasing, renewals, payment methods or your stored card. I never need to spend your money to launch a website, and you should not hand that to anyone on the way to one.

Leave switched off: anything about transfers. A transfer permission usually lets the holder move the domain to another company, release it, or list it for sale. That is ownership, and ownership stays with you. If the invite screen has a transfer toggle, it stays off.

If you are staring at a level and cannot tell what it actually covers, screenshot it and send it to me. I will read it and tell you which one to pick.

Option 2. Paste the two records yourself

Nobody gets into your account. It is two records. I send you your two exact values, with a screenshot showing them circled, and you copy them in. Here is the shape of what you are adding.

Type	Name / Host	Value
A	`@`	the IP address I send you
CNAME	`www`	the hostname I send you

The two values are different for every site, so I send you yours rather than printing them here. Copy them exactly, including any trailing dot.

Find the DNS records screen
Open your domain, then look for a tab or a button called DNS, DNS Records, Manage DNS, Advanced DNS or Zone Editor. Different names, same room. You know you are in the right place when you see a table of rows with columns like Type, Name or Host, and Value or Points To.
Photograph the whole list before you change anything
Screenshot it, or take a picture of the screen with your phone. If something goes sideways later, that picture is how we put it back in two minutes instead of two hours. Do it even though nothing is going to go sideways.
Delete the old records that are in the way, and only those
Two kinds of row are in the way. Any A or CNAME record whose name is @, blank, or your bare web address. And any A or CNAME record named www. Those are your old site, or a parking page your company switched on when you first registered. Delete those. Leave every other row alone.
Never touch a row whose type is MX. Those carry your email. Same for TXT rows, which is where your email's spam protection lives. Deleting one of those does not break anything visibly, it just starts sending your mail to the junk folder at the other end.
Skip this step and adding the new record usually fails with a message about a record with that host already existing. It reads like a real problem. It is not one. The old row is still sitting in the spot.
DNS records
Your domainDNS
A · @ → your old site
CNAME · www → your old site
MX rows, your email, leave these alone
TXT rows, your email, leave these alone
Delete the two highlighted rows, then add the two I send you in their place. Every MX and TXT row stays exactly as it is.
Type the Name field exactly right
This is where it goes wrong more than anywhere else. The Name or Host field takes the prefix only, not the whole address. For the second record, type www and nothing else. Not www.yourdomain.com. Your company adds the rest of the address on for you, so typing the full thing produces a record for www.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com, which points at nothing and looks perfectly fine on the screen.
For the first record, the root of your address, most companies want @. A few want the field left completely empty, and a few fill your domain in for you and will not let you edit it. If yours is not offering @, leave it blank and send me a screenshot before you save.
The first record has to be an A record
Never a CNAME at the root. The root of your domain is also where the records that run your email have to live, and a CNAME there conflicts with them. That is a rule of how DNS works, not a preference of mine. It is also one of the ways people lose their email without meaning to.
If the only thing your company offers you at the root is something called ALIAS or ANAME, stop and text me before you save it.
Copy the values exactly, dot and all
Paste them, do not retype them. The hostname I send you may end in a dot. That dot is part of the value and it needs to go in with the rest of it.
Leave TTL on whatever the default or automatic setting is. If there is a box offering you an AAAA or IPv6 record, skip it. We are not using one.
Save each record, then text me
Some editors save each row on its own, so check that both actually landed. Then read down the list one more time and confirm every MX row you photographed is still sitting there. Then send me a message and I will confirm from my side that it is pointing at the new site.

If you get stuck

Text or call me at (314) 246-9224, or email hello@localcraftdigital.com. Send me the name of your domain company and I will either walk you through it click by click or do it with you on the phone. It takes about five minutes with me on the line. This page exists to save you a call. It is not here to dodge one.