Products

Custom domain

Your community at your own address — the three DNS records, the check button, and what the stages mean.

From the Pro plan. You can see this page on every plan — but you can only enter a domain with Pro. Only the owner may manage it.

Instead of yourname.pukalani.app, your community is at home at your own address, for example www.example.com — with a certificate, with www and without www, and with a redirect from the old address.

What you have to do yourself

Honestly, up front: you always create the DNS records yourself, at the provider where your domain is registered. We cannot do it for you — only you have access there. Everything after that (certificate, redirects) happens on its own.

You have to own the domain already. Pukalani does not sell domains.

Step 1 — enter the domain

Open Dashboard → Community settings → Custom domain and enter the address your community should live at — with or without www. Then Add domain.

The form you enter wins. If you enter www.example.com, that is the main address and example.com redirects to it. If you enter example.com, it's the other way round. We set up the other form automatically — you don't have to enter it separately.

Step 2 — the three DNS records

The page then shows you exactly the records you need to create at your provider. Copy them unchanged. Using example.com as the example:

#	Type	Name	Value
1	TXT	`_pukalani-verify.example.com`	`pukalani-domain-verify=…` (your personal key)
2	A	`example.com`	`49.13.211.173`
3	CNAME	`www.example.com`	`platform.pukalani.app`

What the three do:

The TXT record proves the domain is yours. Without it, someone else could claim your address. It has to stay in place for as long as you use the domain here.
The A record sends the address without www to our server.
The CNAME record sends the www form there. Some providers call this an alias.

You'll only find the TXT value in your own dashboard — it applies to exactly your community. A key from someone else's community does not work.

How long it takes: depending on your provider, DNS changes take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to arrive everywhere.

Step 3 — press "Check"

Back in the dashboard you press Check. The button may be pressed as often as you like and gets as far as it currently can each time. Nothing runs in the background and no notification arrives — you come back and look yourself.

At the top you see three ticks:

Step	Means
DNS records found	We can see your TXT record and the address points at us
Certificate issued	`https` works, no warning sign in the browser
Live updating enabled	The last step, so pages refresh without reloading

And below that, the state:

State	What it means	What to do
No custom domain entered yet	Starting state	Enter a domain
We're waiting for your DNS records	At least one record is still missing or hasn't arrived	Check the records, press Check again later
DNS is in place. The certificate is being issued.	Everything on your side is done	Wait a minute or two, press Check again
Almost there — the last step is running.	Only technology on our side left	Press Check again; if it stalls, get in touch
Active	Done	Nothing
Something went wrong	The reason is next to it under "Where it's stuck right now"	Follow the text

If something gets stuck, the reason is written out in plain language on the page — for instance that a TXT record couldn't be found, or that the domain doesn't point at us yet.

Once it's active

Your Pukalani address stays and redirects permanently to your own domain — including the path, so old links keep working.
The second form redirects too, so www to non-www or the other way round.
You have to sign in again on the new address. A sign-in only ever applies to one address; it cannot be carried over, and that is intended.
Search engines need days to weeks before the new address is everywhere. That is normal.

Removing the domain again

Remove domain undoes the step: the community is at home at its Pukalani address again and the custom domain is no longer answered. Content, members and settings stay unchanged.

Browsers remember redirects. We explicitly ask them not to — some do it anyway. If you still land on the old address after removing it, a hard reload helps (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R).

Known limits

Addresses like example.co.uk are not automatically recognised as a main address, so we build no www pair for them. In that case enter the www form (www.example.co.uk) — the other one then follows by itself.
A sub-address such as forum.example.com works, but gets no second form; records 2 or 3 then don't apply.
One domain, one community. An address already taken cannot be entered a second time.
One small thing on custom domains: if your sign-in is revoked elsewhere, the browser notices about 30 seconds later there rather than immediately. That has no effect on security.

Direct messages

A one-to-one conversation between two members of the same community — off by default, with trust levels, blocking and a reporting route.

Translations

One button translates posts, comments, polls, events and courses into the reader's language — translated once, stored for everyone.