Attaching a custom domain

Serve a site at docs.example.com instead of — or alongside —
<slug>.sitesmojo.com, with a certificate issued and renewed automatically once
DNS points at the platform.

Attach from the portal: Site detail → Domains tab.

Two modes, inferred for you

Managed — the hostname sits inside a DNS zone this workspace already
controls. The pointing record and the ownership TXT are written for you. If a
conflicting record set already exists, the attach refuses and names it; repeat
with the replace-existing confirmation to go ahead. That confirmation is
deliberate, because writes replace the whole record set.

External — DNS lives somewhere else. Nothing is written; you publish the
records yourself.

The two records

For docs.example.com on a site with slug acme:

An apex name (example.com with no subdomain) gets an A record to the serving
IP instead of the CNAME, because a CNAME at a zone apex is not valid DNS.

The TXT record is not optional. It proves you control the DNS, and no
certificate is ever issued without it. "The name resolves here" proves nothing on
its own — any stale record could do that.

The states

DNS status:

• pending — the records are not visible yet, or only one of the two checks
  passes. The status message says which, and what it saw.
• verified — both checks pass. Certificate issuance starts automatically.
  There is no "request certificate" step.
• broken — a domain that was verified stopped resolving here, or the TXT
  disappeared. Serving continues while the certificate is valid; renewals stop
  until it is fixed.

Certificate status runs none → queued → issuing → active, or lands on
failed with the certificate authority's own message attached. Issuance is
gated hard: nothing is requested while the domain does not resolve here with
proven ownership. Repeated failures back off and park at failed after eight
attempts. Fix the cause, then retry.

What works once the certificate is active

The domain is a full address for the site, not just an HTTPS front door.
Analytics count into the same site's numbers with nothing to configure. Forms
accept submissions from it — your own domains are implicit. Navigating between
apex and www counts the view and adds no referrer row.

Two honest limits:

• Analytics and forms start at certificate-active, not at attach. That is the
  same moment the domain starts serving HTTPS, so there is no window where the
  page loads but the numbers do not.
• DNS is not re-checked per request. An active certificate proves the checks
  passed at issuance and at each renewal. Re-point the hostname elsewhere and it
  keeps being served and attributed to your site until the certificate expires —
  detach if you want that to stop now.

robots.txt and sitemap.xml

These name the primary domain, and only from the next deploy. Marking a
domain primary does not rewrite content that was already generated. Deploy again.

Detaching

Serving stops within about 30 seconds. Managed mode restores the DNS snapshot
taken at attach and reports each record individually. Certificate material is
retained, so re-attaching the same hostname inside the certificate's validity
serves again without re-issuance.