I am the site owner, not the developer! I have been trying for several weeks to have traffic to the new site on Netlify redirected from Fat Cow which is where the domain is currently registered and also was hosting my old website. (Wordpress based site which had to be taken down as was hacked.) I have been trying for several weeks to get the redirect to work. Fat Cow tech support put in a “stealth” redirect which seems to work in a frame? As a result the address bar always shows the landing page, even when links to other pages are clicked. They do not seem to understand the request. Is this not feasible? Many thanks
Why use a redirect? Just point the nameservers or use CNAME and A records in the domain’s DNS on Fat Cow to that of Netlify website. Of course, it’s possible only if Fat Cow allows you to change the DNS (it should).
I recommend starting with the first option above if you are just starting out. Netlify DNS does enable some automatic features which only work with Netlify DNS (like SSL for branch subdomains). However, setting up external DNS is typically simpler and the impact of mistakes is more limited so I suggest that first in most cases.
If there are questions about the external DNS instructions (or anything else), please let us know.
Hi and thanks for the quick response both! I have tried asking Fat Cow technical support to use CNAME and A records as this is what I understood to be the correct way (as per my opening statement, I am not a developer.) The Fat Cow technical support don’t seem to understand what I am asking them to do however - maybe I should not be using the phrase “redirect”??? What exactly should I be asking them to set up? (They are very helpful and happy to make setting changes for me, they just dont seem to know what I am trying to achieve) I have been mostly using chat which is not great but have also called the states from the UK to try and resolve with the same problems. All help gratefully received!
Ask them if changing nameservers is possible as that’s the best way. If that’s possible, add the custom domain to your Netlify account and then tell the Fat Cow support to update your nameservers to that what Netlify will show you in your dashboard. If changing nameservers is not possible, ask them to set a A records pointing at 104.198.14.52 and CNAME record pointing at your Netlify website address.
I am pretty sure that nameservers can be changes - I have the page open for nameservers now. Where do I find the address of my netlify custom domain so that I can ask Fat Cow to point to this please? Oh, one other thing, my emails are through Fat Cow also - forwarded to a gmail account. Previously when trying the set up the new netlify site through Fat Cow the emails broke. Will the nameserver change affect emails?
Thanks for that. I am chatting to Fat Cow now. They are asking:
For nameservers change you need provide the record as example: ns1.domain.com ns2.domain.com
Please contact netlify and ask them for the nameservers.
Yes, as I said, you’d get the nameservers when you try to add the domain to your Netlify account. They might be same for many, though it’s better if you check in your account just to be sure.