How to connect your Network Solutions domain to your Service Bay Digital website

Your domain is registered at Network Solutions. To make it show the website we built you, you change two records in your own Network Solutions account: the www address, and the plain address without the www. It takes about five minutes, costs nothing, 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.

These screens only work if your domain uses Network Solutions’ own nameservers. If Network Solutions offers to move you to its nameservers so you can edit records, say no and tell us. That move can cut off email you run elsewhere.

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

Open Advanced DNS

On the domain page, go down to Advanced Tools and click Manage next to Advanced DNS Records. If any screen asks you to change nameservers, stop and tell us.

Change the www record

If there’s already a CNAME record for www, click its pencil icon. If not, click + Add Record and choose a CNAME. In Refers to, choose www. In Alias to, enter the www value in our email to you. Leave the TTL as it is. Click Edit (or Add for a new record). If your www is an A record rather than a CNAME, stop and tell us.

Change the plain-address record

Scroll to the A record whose Refers to is @ and click its pencil icon. In Points to, enter the plain-address value in our email to you. Leave the TTL as it is. Click Edit. If there’s no A record for @, click + Add Record, choose an A record, choose @ in Refers to, enter the value in Points to, and click Add.

Remove anything else on the plain address

If there’s more than one A record for @, or any AAAA record for @, it has to go. Network Solutions documents deleting these only in its Classic View: follow steps 2 and 3, click Classic View, then under IP Address (A Records) click EDIT A RECORDS, tick the box next to the extra @ record, click Continue, check it, and click Save Changes. AAAA records are under IPV6 Address (AAAA Records) with EDIT AAAA RECORDS. If you’d rather, tell us what you see and we’ll walk you through it.

If you pay for Web Forwarding on this domain, tell us

Network Solutions’ pages don’t say whether forwarding overrides the record you just set. We check it at the last step and tell you whether to cancel it.

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. Network Solutions says record changes take up to 2 hours.

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 Network Solutions, you keep paying Network Solutions 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 Network Solutions, 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 Network Solutions’s screens work.

Do I need Network Solutions’ paid Web Forwarding?

No. The plain-address record does that job, free.

Registered somewhere else?

Plenty of owners find their domain is not where they thought it was. If it is not at Network Solutions, 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 Network Solutions’s own help pages, “How to manage DNS and advanced DNS records in Network Solutions”, “What is Network Solutions Domain Forwarding?”, on 2026-10-08. Network Solutions can change its screens without telling anyone; if what you see doesn’t match this page, tell us and we’ll fix the page.