Subdomains, Nuxt, and Netlify questions for newbie

Hi. I’d like to start a project that uses a headless WordPress install with a Nuxt front-end that’s hosted on Netlify. What I’m having trouble finding an answer to is how to handle DNS and subdomains.

Say I’ve registered mydomain.tld through a traditional LAMP host (Bluehost or whatnot). I’ll use api.mydomain.tld there for the WordPress install.

What I want is to have frontend.mydomain.tld pointing to Netlify where the Nuxt build is hosted. From my research a CNAME is the way to go. But my question is, where is the SSL cert provisioned? Netlify or the LAMP server?

Furthermore, does Netlify know to generate a new build of the site when a new post is published on the WordPress install?

Sorry if these things are covered elsewhere. The topics I find that are similar assume the domain is hosted on Netlify.

Hi @MattC! welcome to netlify and our forums, sorry we’ve been a bit slow to get back to you.

so it’s not so much a matter of where things are hosted, but what the DNS is pointing towards. Also, keep in mind that hosting (where the hard drive lives that is connected to the server that serves your files) is really different than where the domain name is registered (the company you pay money to to make an entry in the giant domain name phonebook of the web). Sometimes hosters are registrars, but more often than not, they only contract with registrars. For example, Netlify doesn’t do domain name registration directly, but we do contract with name.com so you can buy domain names through our UI.

does that change your question at all?

Thanks, Perry. That all makes sense. I was able to actually get a subdomain from Bluehost pointing to Netlify with CNAME. And at first I got an error when trying to provision an SSL cert, but checked it just now and it’s working. And found an answer to my question about having WordPress generate a new build with Build Hooks and a jamstack plugin.

1 Like

perfect, looks like you are getting a lot done! come back anytime with more questions :muscle: