GoDaddy · domains

How to connect your GoDaddy domain to your Service Bay Digital website

Your domain is registered at GoDaddy. To make it show the website we built you, you change two records in your own GoDaddy account: the www address, and the plain address without the www. It takes about five minutes and you keep the domain.

Read this part first. Your email is not involved and does not change. You change two records: the www address, and the plain address without the www. You will not touch your nameservers, your email (MX) records, your TXT records or DNSSEC. If any screen asks you to change nameservers, stop and tell us. You never need to for this.

Before you change anything, write down what’s there. Take a photo or screenshot of your records screen before you edit it. If you ever want to go back, that picture is all you need.

The steps

Tell us before you touch anything

Reply to our email and say go. We switch both addresses on at our end first, and we check from the outside that your email does not depend on the plain address (for nearly every shop it doesn’t) and that nothing on your domain would block its security certificate. If the records go in before we’ve done that, your address shows an error page instead of your site. Told first, the whole thing is uneventful.

Sign in to GoDaddy

Sign in to your GoDaddy Domain Portfolio. We can’t do this part for you, and no honest company would ask you for that password.

Open the domain’s DNS

Select your domain to open its Domain Settings page, then select DNS. If GoDaddy says your domain isn’t using GoDaddy nameservers and your DNS is managed somewhere else, stop here and tell us. If any screen asks you to change nameservers, stop and tell us.

Change the www record

Find the CNAME record named www (on most GoDaddy domains it points to @). Select Edit next to it. Leave Name as www. In Value, enter the www value in our email to you. Leave TTL as it is. Select Save. If there’s no www record at all, select Add New Record, choose CNAME from the Type menu, enter www and the value, then Save. If your www record is an A record rather than a CNAME, stop and tell us.

Free up the plain address, if it’s locked

If your domain has forwarding, select DNS, then Forwarding, select Delete next to your domain, and Delete again to confirm. GoDaddy locks the plain address’s record while forwarding is on. If a connection to another site (for example Squarespace or Instagram) shows above your records, select Remove next to it and confirm with Yes, let’s do it!; GoDaddy locks the record for those too.

Change the plain-address record

Back on DNS, find the A record with @ in the Name column and select Edit next to it. Leave Name as @. In Value, enter the plain-address value in our email to you. Leave TTL as it is. Select Save. If there’s no A record on @, select Add New Record, choose A from the Type menu, enter @ and the value, then Save.

Remove anything else on the plain address

If there’s a second A record on @, or any AAAA record on @, select Delete next to it and confirm with Delete Records. Don’t delete anything else: no MX, TXT, or other names.

Confirm it’s you, if GoDaddy asks

If your domain has Domain Protection, GoDaddy asks for a code by text or authenticator app, or a one-time password sent to the email on your GoDaddy account. That’s GoDaddy checking, not us.

Expect a few odd minutes

For a short while, your address may refuse to load. You won’t get a warning you can click past, just a browser saying it can’t make a secure connection. That’s our end issuing the security certificates for your two addresses. It’s normal and it clears itself. A phone on mobile data may see your old site a little longer than your laptop does. GoDaddy says most changes work within an hour.

Tell us it is done

Reply to our email. We check that both addresses reach your new site over a proper secure connection, with or without the www and with or without https://, and that your mail records are exactly where they were.

Questions people actually ask

Will this break my email?

No. Email runs on its own records, and you don’t touch them. The www address and the plain address are web addresses only, and we check before you start that your mail doesn’t lean on either.

Do I lose my domain?

No. It stays registered to you at GoDaddy, you keep paying GoDaddy for it, and it stays yours.

Can I change it back?

Yes. Put both records back to the values in your before-photo. Nothing here is one-way.

Why does the plain address point at a different value from www?

The www record sends visitors to your new site. The plain-address record sends anyone who leaves the www off to the same place, keeping the page they asked for, over a secure connection.

My records aren’t at GoDaddy, they’re somewhere else.

That happens: a domain bought in one place can have its records kept in another. Make the same two changes wherever your records live, or tell us where that is and we’ll send the steps for that company. Don’t move your nameservers to make GoDaddy’s screens work.

GoDaddy warns that changing an A record could stop my website or email working.

That warning is there for everyone. Your website moving is the point of this step, and we checked at step 1 that your email doesn’t use this record.

GoDaddy won’t let me edit or delete the plain-address record.

Forwarding or a site connection is still on (step 5). If both are gone and it’s still locked, tell us; don’t change anything else to make it work.

Registered somewhere else?

Plenty of owners find their domain is not where they thought it was. If it is not at GoDaddy, open the page for the company it is at — the screens and the wording are different at every one.

Not sure which of these you are with? Start here and we will work it out with you.

Steps checked against GoDaddy’s own help pages, “Edit a CNAME record”, “Add a CNAME record”, “Edit an A record”, “Add an A record”, “Delete DNS records”, “Remove my domain forwarding”, “Remove a connection from my domain”, “Manage DNS records”, on 2026-10-08. GoDaddy can change its screens without telling anyone; if what you see doesn’t match this page, tell us and we’ll fix the page.