Note
This article will help set up the redirects you need for your website. You may not need any if you're only using a subdomain with us, but we'd recommend setting one up if you're using your main domain with us.
What is a redirect?
Redirects are a helpful and often essential part of your domain configuration, but what exactly are redirects? Simply put, redirects are addresses that send you somewhere else when typed in. Redirects can sometimes be a whole domain, for example an old website that you still own but you now want to redirect visitors from there to your new website. Redirects are also often used for subdomains, with the most common example of this being 'www.' which we will use in our example.
Why you should always use A records
Many people still type the whole 'www.yourdomain.com' into the address bar, so you'll need to set up a redirect to ensure that they are sent to where your website actually lives on 'yourdomain.com'.
Before you start, let's briefly clarify that you should forget about CNAME and ALIAS records (if you've ever heard of them).
Yes, you read that correctly. SupaPass custom domain management simply does not support them - and for a very good reason. Behind the scenes we use redirects instead.
Why?
It’s better for Search Engine Optimisation (those precious Google rankings);
It allows us to automatically redirect from
www. to top-level domains;It allows you to easily switch traffic from any previous old website(s)/links to point instead to your new SupaPass website - without losing any SEO rankings;
It has become recommended best practice.
Setting up a redirect
Let's use the example of a www. redirect, if you're using your main domain with us then this is recommended.
Repeat the steps from before by creating another A record, this time setting the Name field to domain you wish to redirect from e.g.
wwwIn the domain settings of your SupaPass Dashboard, add the redirect address as an existing domain and click 'Connect Domain'.
Your newly added domain should redirect to your default domain. You can choose to change which site is your default in the section below.
Changing the default domain
You may want to change the default domain so that all of the others redirect to there instead. To do this, simply click the more button (3 dots) and select 'Make Default'. You can also delete a domain from the same menu.
Because both are already set in your DNS providers’ records as A records there are no other changes required (yay!), and no waiting for up to 24 hours for changes to propagate around the internet.