Your site is live, but it's at a temporary web address and you want it at
yourbusiness.com. There are three ways to get there. Which one you need comes
down to one thing: do you want the main address (yourbusiness.com) or the
www version (www.yourbusiness.com)? — plus whether you already own the
domain. Here's the plain-English version.
You own it, and the www version is fine → a CNAME
A CNAME is a single setting that says "www.yourbusiness.com points to my
site over here." You add it where your domain's settings live, and it leaves
everything else where it is. In many cases that's the simplest setup, and it's
all you need if you're happy at www.
The catch: this method can't be used for the main yourbusiness.com (with no
www) — that's just how domains work. Which leads to the second option.
You want the main address → nameservers
To serve yourbusiness.com itself, your website provider needs to manage the
domain's settings. You do that by changing the domain's nameservers at your
registrar (the company you bought the domain from) — a one-time switch. Once the
change finishes updating, both yourbusiness.com and www.yourbusiness.com can
work together, with one sending visitors to the other so you have a single main
address.
It sounds heavier than a CNAME, but it's actually simpler to live with: with
the settings in one place, the main address, the www, and the security padlock
are all handled together.
If you don't have a domain yet → buy one
No domain? You register one. The mechanics above still apply afterward — it's just that you're starting from scratch. Pick the name, register it, point it at your site.
One thing worth checking: make sure you own it
Here's the question to ask whoever sets this up for you — including us: "Am I the registrant?" The registrant is the legal owner of record. It's entirely possible for someone to register a domain for you but put themselves down as the owner — which means renewal notices, transfer rights, and ultimately control sit with them, not you — which can leave you unable to renew or move your own domain later.
The domain can live inside your provider's infrastructure for convenience — that part's fine and normal. But the ownership should be yours: your name on the registrant record, the verification and renewal emails coming to your inbox. If a provider can't say yes to "am I the registrant," you don't really own your domain.
How this works with us
You don't have to learn any of the above. You tell us the domain you own (or that
you'd like to buy one), and we handle the DNS or the registration — the right way
for your case, root or www. You stay the registrant. The plumbing is ours;
the domain is yours.