We removed our free Sandbox April 25th.
You can read more on our blog.

Custom Domains

New custom domains require a ‘live’ flavor. So the first steps in adding a custom domain to your application are:

  1. Deploy a ‘live’ application on dotCloud.
  2. Purchase your domain name.
  3. "dotcloud alias add"
  4. Edit your DNS CNAME record via your registrar.
  5. Wait up to 48 hours (but it could be as quick as 2 minutes).

Adding a Custom Domain

1. Deploy

Please see the ‘live’ documentation for how to create a ‘live’-flavored application.

2. Purchase your domain

There are many domain registration services. You can use any domain registrar that allows you to edit your CNAME records. Some popular registrars are:

  • GoDaddy.com
  • ix web hosting
  • 1and1
  • EveryDNS.net
  • Yahoo!SmallBusiness

3. Alias add

Let’s imagine you’ve purchased the domain “example.com”. You cannot map a naked domain like “example.com” to a dotCloud-hosted service, but you can map a wildcard domain (“*.example.com”) or a specific subdomain like “www.example.com”.

To use www.example.com with your ramen.www service:

$ dotcloud alias add ramen.www www.example.com
Ok. Now please add the following DNS record:
www.example.com. IN CNAME gateway.dotcloud.com

If everything goes well, you’ll see the “Ok...” message and the command will show you the DNS records to use to complete the setup. The first part (“www.example.com.”) is the name of the record you should edit at your registrar. The second part, “gateway.dotcloud.com” is the data you should map to your domain. Note that “gateway.dotcloud.com” could change, so please pay attention to the value returned by 'dotcloud alias' after “IN CNAME”.

You should follow your registrar’s instructions for editing your DNS record and CNAME. The specifics of how to edit vary from registrar to registrar. In general you follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your registrar.
  2. Select the domain you want to edit.
  3. Open the DNS editor.
  4. Add a CNAME record
    1. Name is usually the new subdomain, e.g. “www” or “*” (for all subdomains)
    2. Host Name or Data is the value "dotcloud alias add" returned after “IN CNAME”, e.g. “gateway.dotcloud.com”.

dotCloud’s alias command will be effective in about a minute after completing, and your service will be available on your custom domain as soon as your registrar propagates the change in your DNS CNAME. The DNS name change could take as long as 48 hours, but often completes in just a few minutes.

Removing a Custom Domain

$ dotcloud alias remove ramen.www www.example.com

Naked Domains

You cannot use a “naked domain” (i.e. an address without an host part, like my-own-domain.com). See why on our forum.

Note

You can use wildcard domains, by using a domain like *.example.com.

SSL

dotCloud can host your own CA-signed certificates with your custom domains. For more information, please see the SSL documentation.