Connecting a custom domain

HelpKit allows you to setup a custom domain for your site. This way your users can find your site by typing something like support.example.com instead of the default example.helpkit.so

Navigate to your domain registrar. This is where you bought your domain name. NameCheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare or Google Domains are a few common ones.

You should see some settings for your domain called something like DNS.

In this example I will be using NameCheap and navigate to the Advanced DNS section.

You should see a settings table that has fields similiar to Type, Host, Value and TTL

Next, create a new row in your domain registrar that has the Type of CNAME. In the Host field enter your preferred subdomain name such as support, docs or help. For the Value you should add your default HelpKit domain. You can safely ignore TTL (if you have to set a value you can freely choose one)

In the HelpKit dashboard navigate to Settings/General and scroll down to the Domains section:

Then add your desired custom domain with the subdomain you have setup in step 2. Enter your pure domain name without things such as https:// or www.

In the best case you will see a green ✅ Verified button right after step 3. However, sometimes it can take a while for the service to verify your domain. In that case you will see the following screen:

We suggest to wait a minute or two and then click the blue 🔁 Verify button. If you still see the same screen, please wait a bit more and try again. Ultimately you should see the following screen with a green ✅ Verified button:

That's it ✨

After you have connected your custom domain, HelpKit will automatically set your custom domain as canonical. This effectively tells search engines like Google what the 'preferred' or 'main' URL of a page should be and avoids multiple content issues.

Please reach out to dominik@helpkit.so if you need further help with the setup ✨