Due to heightened security measures implemented in NationBuilder’s CDN infrastructure, NationBuilder websites must always be attached to subdomains (e.g. ‘www.example.com’) instead of a website’s root domain (e.g. ‘example.com’). When connecting a custom domain, we recommend setting up a redirect that will re-route traffic from your root domain to the subdomain where your NationBuilder website lives.

However, if you had previously hosted a website at the root domain and had an SSL certificate applied to it, supporters who have visited your site before will likely have your website URL cached in their web browser’s DNS cache. This means that when these legacy website visitors type in ‘example.com’, their browser will remember to send them to ‘https://example.com’ and expect there to be a site with an SSL certificate there. The result is an error message from the browser, which is not an ideal user experience.

To avoid this error, we have come up with a solution that is powered by a partner called Redirect Pizza. Redirect Pizza allows you to configure a redirect from the https version of your root domain directly to your subdomain where your NationBuilder website is hosted. While normal 301 redirects that you can apply from your DNS management portal will usually let you forward traffic from your root domain to a subdomain, these redirects rarely work to re-route https traffic because there is no SSL certificate for your root domain. Redirect Pizza solves this problem by creating a redirect that lives at your root domain and has its own SSL certificate. It takes minutes to set up, and once configured, it confidently routes all traffic to your NationBuilder website.

NOTE: This solution is only needed if you are connecting a NationBuilder website to a custom domain where a website was previously hosted at the root domain with an SSL certificate applied to it (e.g. https://example.com).

1. Visit redirect.pizza and click Get Started.

2. Click + Create Redirect and enter the following information:

(e.g. “mywebsite.com”)

(e.g. “https://www.mywebsite.com” )

3. Click Save redirect.

4. Redirect.pizza will now provide you with a DNS record to add to your DNS zone file that will route traffic from your root domain to redirect.pizza to handle the redirect. You have the option of adding this as an A record (89.106.200.1) or a CNAME record (edge.redirect.pizza), but many DNS management tools do not allow you to add a CNAME record to your root domain, so an A record is the recommended route. Log in to your DNS management service (e.g. GoDaddy, NameCheap, CloudFlare, etc..) and add this record to your root domain, like so:

Note: If your domain is being managed by NationBuilder, please reach out to NationBuilder Support ([email protected] or via chat) to ask us to add this record for you.
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5. Voila! Your redirect pizza is in the oven and will be successfully routing all root domain traffic to your website once the record has propagated across the internet, which can take up to 24-48 hours, but generally takes less than 2 hours.