Nucleus Sermons Custom Domain Guide
Setting up your Sermon Engine custom domain with a domain purchased through GoDaddy, Google Domains, or even one managed by Cloudflare is a straightforward process. If you run into trouble though, don't hesitate to contact support at hello@nucleus.church!
NOTE: This is a walkthrough for setting up a custom subdomain for your Sermon Engine managed by Cloudflare. To see the complete custom domain walkthrough, click here.
Important Definitions
URL
A URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is just a fancy way of saying a website address. A URL has several components, but the two we'll focus on are the domain and the permalink. As an example, https://lifeabundant.ca/about is the URL to take you to the About Us page on Life Abundant's website.
Domain
A domain is is the root or most basic form of your website's address. Continuing with the URL example above, Life Abundant's domain is simply lifeabundant.ca.
Permalink
Everything you see after a domain is considered the permalink (sometimes also referred to as the slug) of the URL. In our example, the permalink is about.
Subdomain
A subdomain is the portion of a URL that comes before the domain. With every Nucleus comes a free subdomain. Every Nucleus subdomain will be in the format of abc.nucleus.church, where abc is the subdomain. You can change your subdomain to be whatever you'd like it to be, as long as another church hasn't already claimed it. (To edit your Nucleus subdomain, click here.) In the example below, lifeabundant is the subdomain of nucleus.church.
Domain Registrar
A domain registrar is a company dedicated to selling custom domains. Nucleus isn't a domain registrar. If you'd like to purchase a domain, we recommend checking out GoDaddy.com. You're more than welcome to use a custom domain you already own for your Nucleus Web. Click here to learn how to point your domain to your Nucleus.
Step #1: Domain DNS Settings
The first step to configuring your custom domain, is to point your domain to the Sermon Engine IP using your domain's DNS settings.
Basically, this tells Cloudflare (read: registrar) that you want your domain to point to your Nucleus.
To do this, login to your registrar account and click on the 'DNS Settings' tab of the domain you wish to use as your Sermon Engine custom domain.
Next, we're going to create a new A record for your subdomain. You'll most likely want to create a subdomain of your website's domain to host your Sermon Engine on. For example, sermons.lifeabundant.ca. Most registrars will allow you to setup up to 100 subdomains on any domain!
Click the 'Add' button to create a new A record for your domain OR click on the pencil icon to edit an existing A record.
From here, using the dropdown menu, select 'A' from the available options - this signifies an A record.
Now, simply fill in the necessary fields using the values listed below and click save (see screenshot for example):
- Host name = your desired subdomain ie. sermons
- IP address (value) = 159.89.233.110
- TTL (time to launch) = as low as possible i.e. 600 seconds, 1m, etc.
Set that TTL time as low as possible, smash the add button, and boom! You're done Step #1 👊
Step #2: Sermon Engine Domain Settings
After completing Step #1, your custom domain (ie. sermons.lifeabundant.ca) will be pointing at your Sermon Engine. But this is just a one-way relationship at this point.
Now, it's time to let your Sermon Engine know which domain it should use to serve your site to the world.
To begin, navigate to your Settings page while logged in to your Nucleus account. Scroll to the bottom of your settings panel until you see "Custom Domain" under Sermon Engine. Or click here to access those settings.
Simply enter your domain name (WITHOUT "www." or "http://" at the beginning - Example: sermons.lifeabundant.ca)
Once you've added your custom domain to the field provided, hit that 'Update Domain' button to activate your changes #activated.
NOTE: Even once you've setup everything properly with your Sermon Engine custom domain, your new domain won't appear instantly. Domain propagation can take up to 24 hours.
Of course, if your domain is correctly pointed at your Sermon Engine, your settings are properly configured, and you're still not seeing your custom domain working as it should, contact support at hello@nucleus.church and we'll make sure to help you set it up!