Setup guide

Wix and IONOS

These two share a page because they are the awkward ones. Wix has a proper invite system, but it may not reach the screen I actually need. IONOS has no way to invite me to a domain at all. Neither of those stops us. Both end with your site live on your own address. What follows is the honest version of each, so you know what you are agreeing to before you click anything.

Takes about ten minutes.

Wix is first, IONOS is second. Read your half. If you are not sure which company holds your web address, it is whoever emails you the renewal notice once a year. Send me the address and I will tell you in a minute.

Wix

First, which kind of Wix domain do you have

There are two, and they need completely different instructions.

You bought the domain from Wix. Then Wix holds both the registration and the DNS records, and this whole section applies to you.
You bought the domain somewhere else and connected it to Wix. Then your records live at that other company. Wix says so itself: when a domain is connected by pointing, you manage the records with the domain host, not with Wix. Go to that company's guide instead.

If you cannot tell which one you are, do not guess. Ask me. Sending you into the wrong panel wastes an afternoon.

Inviting me, and what the invite really reaches

Wix does have a real invite-by-email system, and there is a domain role in it. It is worth two minutes to try. I want you to understand its shape first, because it is not as clean as it looks.

What Domain Manager does, and what I cannot promise

The role itself is narrow, which is good. Wix describes Domain Manager as being able to connect and manage domains but not able to make purchases. It cannot spend your money. That is the level I want and the only one you should tick.

Here is the part I will not paper over. Wix's invite is scoped to a site. Your domain and its DNS records live in your Wix account, which is a different area. Wix separately states that collaborators cannot access any account-wide information. Wix has never published which of those two statements wins, so I cannot honestly tell you that Domain Manager gets me to the records screen.

So the plan is: you invite me, I log in and look, and if the screen is not there you paste two records while I am on the phone with you. Two minutes to find out, and the fallback is the next section either way.

Please do not give me Owner or Admin (Co-Owner). Those are your whole business. Please do not give me Billing Manager. That is your card. Domain Manager, on its own, nothing else ticked.

Open the dashboard for your site
Sign in to Wix and open the site dashboard, not the account settings. The invite lives inside the site.
Go to Settings, then Roles & Permissions, then Invite Collaborators
The Settings list is long. Roles & Permissions is the row you want. The button on that screen says Invite Collaborators.
Put my email in the Emails field
jake@localcraftdigital.com. That exact address. It is the one my Wix login sits on, and an invite sent anywhere else lands in a mailbox I cannot open.
Tick Domain Manager, and only Domain Manager
The roles are checkboxes, so it is easy to tick a second one by accident. One box.
Invite Collaborators
Site DashboardSettingsRoles & Permissions
Admin (Co-Owner)
Website Manager
Billing Manager
Domain Manager
Wix's real list is longer than this. Domain Manager is the one to tick, and it is the only one.
Click Send Invites
I get an email, click Accept Invite, and log in. Nothing is active until I click it, so if I go quiet for a day, that is the step that has not happened. Poke me. Wix invitations expire after 30 days.

Adding the two records yourself

This is the reliable path on Wix, and it is the only path if the invite does not reach the records screen. It is not hard. It is four fields.

Photograph the whole DNS panel before you touch it

Open the records list and screenshot all of it, scrolling if it takes two shots. Pay attention to any row whose type is MX. Those rows are your email.

Adding an A record and a CNAME does not touch MX records, so the job in this guide is safe for your email. Two things near it are not. If your business email was bought through Wix, Wix put Google Workspace MX records into this zone for you, so anything that wipes or resets the zone destroys your mail. Wix has a reset-to-default-records option. Do not use it.

MX records are also edited from a separate menu, Domain Actions then Edit MX Records, and Wix states they can only be managed there when the domain is connected by nameservers rather than by pointing. If you have email on this domain, send me the screenshot before you change anything.

Open Domains in your Wix account, not in the site dashboard
Click the Domain Actions icon next to your domain, then Manage DNS Records.
Wix account, Domains
DomainsDomain ActionsManage DNS Records
Manage DNS Records
Edit MX Records
Different area from the site dashboard you were just in. This one is account level.
Add the A record
In the section headed A (Host), click + Add Record. Leave Host Name blank. A blank host name is what Wix uses for your bare address, the version with no www on the front. Other companies write that as @.
Put the IP address I send you in Value. Click Save, then Save Changes in the pop-up. There are two saves. People miss the second one.
Add the www CNAME
In the section headed CNAME (Aliases), click + Add Record. Host Name is www. Put the hostname I send you in Value. Save, then Save Changes again.
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.
If Wix refuses with a Hostname already in use error, that is expected. Wix reserves www for its own sites, so the old record is still sitting there. Delete it first, then add mine.
Delete the two old Wix records
The old A record is 185.230.63.107 and the old CNAME is cdn1.wixdns.net. Leave them in place and they fight with the new ones for who answers.
Deleting them takes your old Wix site off your address. That is the whole point of what we are doing, but I would rather you read it here than discover it after clicking.
Check you did both, then wait
Both records or neither. Wix is explicit that if you update only one of the two, the site will not appear secure and visitors can get a Not secure warning in their browser.
Send me a screenshot of the two new rows so I can check them before we both start waiting. Wix's own stated window for DNS changes is up to 48 hours. It is usually far quicker, but I would rather you knew the real number than texted me at hour three.

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

IONOS

IONOS has no way to give me access to a domain. Not a narrow way, not a read-only way. Their control panel has no feature for adding a second person to a domain contract. So on IONOS you make the change and I stay on the phone with you while you do it.

I want to be clear that this is a normal path and not a consolation prize. It takes about ten minutes, you never hand over a password, and you can see every keystroke that goes into your own account. Several of my clients are on IONOS and it has never once been the thing that held a launch up.

Do not change your nameservers on IONOS

This is the one that has cost me a client's email before, and IONOS is where it is easiest to trigger by accident. There is a screen called Name Server with an option called Use Custom Name Servers. Do not touch it, and do not let anyone sell it to you as a shortcut.

IONOS's own documentation says that once custom nameservers are in use, the records held at IONOS are no longer visible on the internet. All of them. Your MX records, your SPF and DKIM records, your autodiscover record. If your mailboxes are at IONOS, or your Microsoft 365 was set up through IONOS, your email stops arriving and it stays stopped until every one of those records has been rebuilt by hand somewhere else. IONOS allows up to 48 hours for that change to spread, so the outage is not a five minute one.

I do not need it. Two records edited in place do the same job with none of that risk. If anybody ever tells you to point your nameservers somewhere, call me before you click Save.

If you pay for IONOS Domain Guard on this domain, leave it on. Its stated job includes protecting your nameserver settings behind an email confirmation loop, which is a seatbelt worth keeping. If it ever gets in the way of an ordinary record edit, tell me and I will look at it with you.

Screenshot everything first
Open your DNS list and photograph the whole thing, especially any row of type MX. If anything ever looks wrong later, that screenshot is how we put it back in five minutes instead of five days.
Open Domains & SSL and find the DNS screen
Sign in, open Domains & SSL, find your domain, open the Actions menu next to it and choose DNS.
IONOS, Domains & SSL
Domains & SSLyourbusiness.comActions
DNS
Manage Subdomains
Name Server
The Actions column shows as three dots in some accounts and a gear in others. Same menu, IONOS has renamed it over the years.
Edit the existing A record, do not add a second one
Find the row of type A, click the pencil icon under Actions, choose Edit record, and replace the address in the Points to field with the IP I send you. Click Save.
Edit, do not add. Two A records on the same hostname is a coin flip on every visit, because whatever asks for your site takes the first address that comes back. IONOS also will not let you change the hostname on an existing A record, so if you have made a spare one by mistake, delete it rather than trying to rename it.
Add the www CNAME, which is not where you expect
Go back to Domains & SSL, open the Actions menu again and choose Manage Subdomains. Click the gear next to www, choose DNS, click ADD RECORD and pick CNAME.
Hostname is www. Put the hostname I send you in Point to. Save.
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.
Manage Subdomains
Domains & SSLActionsManage SubdomainswwwDNS
www
ADD RECORD
This is the step nearly everyone stalls on. The www record is not in the DNS list you were just looking at. It is one level down, inside the www subdomain.
Send me a screenshot, then give it an hour
IONOS says record changes take effect immediately on their side and take up to about an hour to spread worldwide. The 48 hour figure you may have read belongs to nameserver changes, and we are not doing one of those.

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

Both of you, two last things

If you get stuck

If a screen does not look like the one on this page, or you get two steps in and would rather someone else drove, text or call me on (314) 246-9224 or email hello@localcraftdigital.com. I will get on the phone and we will do it together. On IONOS that is the normal way this happens anyway, so you are not putting me out. This page exists to save you a call, not to refuse one.