Point an IONOS domain at your church website

Do this

1. 1Publish your site first. IONOS saves instantly — visitors can still see the old site for up to an hour.
2. 2Menu → Domains & SSL.
3. 3Under Actions next to your domain, click the three dots — a gear on some accounts. Select DNS.
4. 4Find the A record whose Host name is blank or @. Under Actions on that row, click the pencil — not the bin beside it. Then Edit record.
5. 5Put the IP from the domain screen in Points to. Leave Host name. Leave TTL. Save.
6. 6Now find the A record whose Host name is www. Under Actions, click the bin. Confirm. It blocks the CNAME. No www row? Skip this step.
7. 7Add record. Select CNAME. Host name www. Put the value from the domain screen in Points to. No http://. No trailing dot. Leave TTL. Save.
8. 8Back to the domain screen. It says Live on its own.

4 traps

• Edit the A, do not add oneIONOS already has an A record for the bare domain, pointing at its own page. Edit that row. Add a second A instead and your site loads for some visitors, the IONOS page for others, with no warning.
• www already has an A recordIONOS makes www live on every domain, pointing wherever the bare domain points. The CNAME will not save until that A row is deleted. If www is missing from the list entirely, Actions → Manage subdomains → Create Subdomain, name it www, Save.
• Not Name serverThe same three-dot menu holds Name server as well as DNS. Changing nameservers there takes MX with it and stops church email. Click DNS only.
• A locked recordRead the Service column on the A row. If it names a service — IONOS MyWebsite, WordPress, a CDN — the pencil will not edit it. Under Actions on that row, click Disable service. Do not disable a service named for your email.

Do not touch

NS · SOA · MX · TXT · SRV, and any autodiscover or autoconfig CNAME. MX is your church email — IONOS, Google or Microsoft — and deleting one stops mail silently.

Not working

• An IONOS page still loads after an hourThe A record did not save, or a service overwrote it. Re-open DNS and check Points to on the blank row.
• No A row with a blank Host nameAdd record, select A, leave Host name empty. Never type the domain name in.
• IONOS would not save the www recordA www A record is in the way. Delete that row, then add the CNAME. If www is not listed at all, Manage subdomains → Create Subdomain first.
• The DNS buttons are greyed outA service manages that record. Read the Service column. Under Actions on that row, click Disable service.
• Bare domain works, www does notAn old www A record is still there. Delete that row, then Add record → `CNAME` again. Do not leave www with no record.
• Email stoppedAn MX record was edited. Tell us, do not keep changing.