Setting up custom domain with IONOS

Hey everyone, it’s my first time setting up a custom domain and I’m having issues/confusione and would like some help as I’m kind of stuck.

I have a website deployed at https://ricardobozzisportfolio.netlify.app/
I’m trying to set up my domain www.ricardobozzi.com, which is with IONOS.

The custom domain page on Netlify says to create an A or CNAME for my primary domain, ricardobozzi.com pointing to the apex load balancer. It also says I should set www.ricardobozzi.com as my primary domain. But it won’t let me set up my primary domain because it says “We’re provisioning a certificate for your site, you cannot change custom domains until that process completes”.

Yesterday I set up the CNAME as the page said and today I attempted to set up the CNAME for my primary one, but IONOS was tellling me that there was a conflict with the one I set up yesterday. I removed everything and tried again. I keep on getting the message from IONOS that the CNAME can only be for a subdomain, I can’t set up the subdomain until I set up the primary one.
As a confused newb, could somebody point me in the right direction?

You are referring to the Configure external DNS for a custom domain documentation I assume?

I current see no A, ALIAS, ANAME or CNAME records for ricardobozzi.com or www.ricardobozzi.com. I see NS, MX, and a TXT record only. You can see for yourself using Google DNS.

Unfortunately because there are no records as mentioned above the system is stuck waiting. If you create the appropriate records, this stalemate should get broken relatively quickly.

Yes you are right, I removed it this morning when I found out the primary-sub situation. Right now I can only configure the dns for ricardobozzi.com as primary, however, the docs are recommending using www.ricardobozzi as primary but I can’t do it. shall I set it up and change it afterwards?

You need to configure the DNS records for both the apex and the www subdomain. Until you have done that the certificate generation will remain stuck. If you are having issues adding the records in IONOS you need to contact their support.

Once the certificate is generated you can then change the primary domain in Netlify.

Ok thanks, I’m on to it.

“Once the certificate is generated you can then change the primary domain in Netlify.”

The only doubt I have now is: I can change it once the certificate is generated and that’s fine. But right now, being that I obviously can’t set up a CNAME for both I need to set up an A record for my current primary and a CNAME for the current subdomain. Will switching them afterwards cause issues?

What do you mean “for both”?

Primary and subdomain. From what I’ve understood, CNAME is only for a subdomain and IONOS doesn’t have flattened CNAMES. So I will have to set up an A record pointing to the ip. I’m wondering if that will cause problems if I switch them afterwards.

You create 2 records:

  1. an A record for the domain apex with the load balancer IP address 75.2.60.5
  2. a CNAME record for the www subdomain with the value ricardobozzisportfolio.netlify.app

as mentioned in

I’ll do that now, but Netlify is informing me that I should set up the www subdomain as my primary.

Or am I just confused in thinking primary and apex are the same thing?

This is done in Netlify and has nothing to do with DNS records.

Gotcha, ok thanks for the help and patience.
Like I said, this is all new and my first time.

I’ve just done it and it set up automatically without me having to set up the subdomain CNAME. Is that normal?

This appears to be resolved, @RyXkci. As for your question, when you add www, the apex domain is added automatically and vice-versa. However, you still need to configure DNS for both, which is now done in your case.

Yes, everything is solved, thank you.

Glad to hear it! Thanks for writing back in.