Your own domain

Plans from Power upwards let you point your own domain at your web space, with its own certificate. The system does the whole thing: it checks your DNS, serves your site on the name, and gets a Let's Encrypt certificate. You do not touch a config file and neither does staff.

First, point the domain here

At your registrar or DNS host, two records for the name you want:

A
62.238.103.15
AAAA
2a01:4f9:c015:481::1

The exact addresses are shown on your website page too, which is the copy to trust if this page ever falls behind. Add www as a second record if you want that to work; it is picked up automatically when it points here.

Then add it on the dashboard

Type the domain into the Custom domain box — just the name, no http://, no www — and press Add. Then leave it alone.

Within a minute the system checks whether the domain resolves to this box. If it does, your site is served on it immediately and a certificate is requested. If DNS has not propagated yet, it says so and keeps checking every minute for a day. You do not need to press anything again.

The dashboard shows where it has got to:

dns_wait
The name does not point here yet — the note says what it points at instead, which is usually enough to spot the typo.
active, live over http
Being served, certificate not issued yet.
active, with a certificate
Done. HTTP redirects to HTTPS.
failed
It gave up after a day of waiting, or something else went wrong; the note says which.

What gets served

The same ~/public_html as your /home/~you address. It is one directory, reachable by two names — not a copy, so there is nothing to keep in sync.

PHP works on the custom domain exactly as it does on the shared one, with the same limits: no shell execution, and scripts run as the web server rather than as you. See your web space.

The certificate

Issued by Let's Encrypt and renewed automatically before it expires. Nothing to do, and no cost.

Renewal needs the domain to still point here. If you move DNS away and leave the domain configured, renewal will start failing — so remove it from the dashboard when you stop using it, which also deletes the certificate.

Removing it

Press Remove next to the domain. The vhost and certificate go within a minute; your files stay exactly where they are, still served at /home/~you.

A couple of limits

  • One domain cannot be claimed by two accounts. If it is already set up here, the panel says so — ask staff if you believe it is yours.
  • Names inside shadowsquad.org are refused: that is the service's own name.
  • What you serve on your own domain is still your account's responsibility, and the acceptable use policy applies to it exactly as it does to everything else here.

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