Point a Bluehost domain at your church website

Do this

1. 1Publish your site first. Your old site is on this same Bluehost account and goes dark the moment you save.
2. 2Domains in the left menu. Click your domain — if the name is not a link, click Manage on its row.
3. 3Click the DNS tab.
4. 4Find the A record for your bare domain. Host Record shows @ or your domain name — not www. Click the three-dot icon at the right of its row, then Edit.
5. 5Change Points to to the A address from the domain screen. Leave Host Record, Type and TTL. Click Edit.
6. 6Look for a record whose Host Record is exactly www. If there is none, skip to the next step. If there is one, click its three-dot icon, then Delete, and confirm. Delete nothing else.
7. 7+ Add record. Single. Type CNAME. Host Record www. Points to the CNAME value from the domain screen. Leave TTL. Click Add.
8. 8Back to the domain screen. It says Live on its own.

4 traps

• Bluehost adds your domain for youHost Record gets your domain appended automatically. Type www. Typing www.yourchurch.org becomes www.yourchurch.org.yourchurch.org.
• Delete www, do not add a secondA CNAME cannot sit beside an existing A or CNAME on the same name. Add fails until the old www record is gone.
• Records only work on Bluehost nameserversThe DNS tab saves happily even when the domain answers elsewhere. Open the Nameservers tab next to DNS. It must read ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com. If it does not, edit DNS where the nameservers point instead.
• Older accounts have no DNS tabOlder accounts land on one of two other screens. Either Domains → Settings → Advanced Tools, then Manage beside Advanced DNS Records — the fields there are Hostname and Alias To. Or cPanel: Hosting → cPanel → Domains → Zone Editor — the fields there are Name and Address. Same two records either way.

Do not touch

MX · TXT · NS · SOA · and any record named mail, webmail or autodiscover. MX is your church email — deleting one stops mail silently. Bluehost runs that email on this same hosting plan, so do not cancel the plan either.

Not working

• Nothing after 4 hoursNameservers are not Bluehost's. Check the Nameservers tab next to DNS.
• Records look right, site never comes upBluehost's Cloudflare CDN is on. Websites → Manage Site → Performance → Cloudflare. Turn it off.
• Add was rejectedA www record still exists. Delete that one, then add.
• www works, bare domain does notThe @ A record still points at Bluehost. Edit it — do not add a second.
• No DNS tab on the domainOlder account. Try Domains → Settings → Advanced Tools → Manage beside Advanced DNS Records. If that is not there, open cPanel from Hosting and use Domains → Zone Editor.
• Email stoppedAn MX record was edited. Tell us, do not keep changing.