Did you purchase Managed WordPress Hosting in GoDaddy, but have your domains in a Google Domains account? Need to know how to connect the two? No worries. I’ve got you covered.

In this post, I am going to show you how to add a Google Domain to GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress Hosting. I will walk you through the entire process to make sure your WordPress website is connected, up and running and your SSL certificate is activated.

If you’d rather WATCH the video, click on the play > button above.

Are you ready? Here are the steps to adding your Google Domain to your GoDaddy hosted website:

STEP 1: Go to domain.google. Make sure that you are logged in to the Google account, where your domains are hosted.

STEP 2: On the Google Domains, page, click on ‘Transfer a Domain You Already Own.’

STEP 3: Once you’re in Google’s Domain panel, look over to the left and click on ‘My Domains.’ You will now see all the domains that you own over on the right side of your Google dashboard.

STEP 4: To the right of the domain that you want to link to your website, click ‘Manage.’

STEP 5: You should now be on the domain overview page. Over on the left, you will see ‘DNS.’ Click on DNS.

STEP 6: Head over to your Godaddy account. Once on GoDaddy, click on your name in the upper right-hand corner. Then click on ‘My Products.’ This will bring you to the ‘All Products and Services page.’

STEP 7: Look for your Managed WordPress Hosting. To the right of the Managed WordPress Hosting, click on ‘Manage.’

STEP 8: Click on the ‘Settings’ link in the top navigation.

STEP 9: Scroll down until you see ‘Domains.’ Click on ‘Add’ to the right of Domains.’

STEP 10: Click on ‘New Primary Domain.’ If you’ve watched the video, you have seen that the WordPress website that I referenced is being hosted on a temporary domain. Most likely, your website is as well. Again, to the right of ‘Domains,’ click on ‘Add’ then ‘New Primary Domain.’

STEP 11: Type or paste in the domain name and click ‘Add Domain.’

STEP 12: GoDaddy has now created a new DNS record for you. When you go back to Google Domains’ DNS page, you will enter the record type, which is A. You’re going to put something in the name field which GoDaddy has given you. You will also need to put the IP address that GoDaddy gives you.

STEP 13: Once you are back on Google Domains’ DNS page, you will see that some of the fields look different from what you saw on GoDaddy.

  • The Type is the type, as it says in GoDaddy;

  • TTL is the same as it is in GoDaddy;

  • GoDaddy calls the Data field Value (just remember that. I know that can be a little confusing);

  • Google Domains is actually going to ask you for a hostname. The hostname is actually the same as the domain name. So you really don’t need to enter anything in there – as long as you are on the page to manage that particular domain.

Now, type all of the information that GoDaddy gave you into each of the fields. Then click on, ‘Save’ to save the record. You will get a message that the record has now been created.

STEP 14: Go back to GoDaddy. After following the steps above, your domain name automatically becomes your primary domain and GoDaddy will show you a long message that says “You need to verify domain ownership to set up SSL. So log in to the provider (meaning the domain provider, which in this case, is Google). Create a text record with the following information (that GoDaddy shows you), then come back here (to GoDaddy) and recheck your SSL status.”

STEP 15: Go back over to Google Domains. Once back on the custom records page, you will see the, ‘A’ record that you just created. What you want to do is click on ‘Create New Record’ under the ‘Hostname’. You are going to create the text record that GoDaddy told you to create. Again, you will leave the hostname, blank. Click on ‘Type’ and this time, scroll down to ‘TXT’ and click on it.

STEP 16: Return to GoDaddy to get the number that they gave you to create the text record. Highlight and copy the number then head back over to Google Domains.

STEP 17: Click in the text field and paste in the number that GoDaddy gave you.

STEP 18: Click on ‘Save.’ Once again, you’ll get a message that says, ‘Custom records are saved.’ And now you’ll see that you have two custom records in Google Domains.

STEP 19: Go back to GoDaddy to make sure that you followed all of the necessary steps and to set up your SSL certificate. Number four of the steps that we read earlier, says ‘Recheck your SSL status.’ Click on that phrase, and look over to the right. You will see where your SSL certificate is. It should say, ‘Activating your SSL, verifying domain ownership.’ Sometimes this takes a little while, but if you watched the video, you saw how quickly it went in this case, almost immediately it said ‘your free SSL certificate has been issued.’

STEP 20: Open up a new browser tab and put in your website’s domain name to see if your website has been connected. A few things regarding this:

  1. It may take anywhere from minutes to hours to actually see your website. If you do not see it, check again. If it takes longer than 24 hours, I would call GoDaddy to see what is going on. Be sure that you follow all of the steps above before calling.

  2. You may see the website, but it may not look like your SSL is active yet. If you see ‘Not secure’ and an ‘!’ on the left side of your domain name in the browser’s address bar, wait and come back and refresh the page later. This may also take anywhere from minutes to hours to activate. You will know your SSL certificate is activated when you see the lock on the left side of your domain name in the browser’s address bar. Again, if it takes longer than 24 hours, I would call GoDaddy to see what is going on. Be sure that you follow all of the steps above before calling.

That was easier than I thought! I hope it worked for you. If it did not be sure to watch the step-by-step video version of this guide.

RESOURCES:

OTHER PLACES TO PURCHASE MANAGED WORDPRESS HOSTING IF YOU ARE NOT A FAN OF GODADDY:

 

Disclosure: Some companies that I mention are my marketing and training partners. I am an affiliate of others. I get commissions for purchases made through affiliate links on this page. I only recommend products and services from companies I trust, tools I’ve used, and those that I highly recommend and feel may be of value to you and beneficial to your marketing efforts.

Author: Romona Foster

Romona Foster is the Social Media Trainer and Consultant at Social Media How To’s with Romona. Romona teaches small businesses and nonprofits how to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google My Business — and the best practices of Email Marketing, Online Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, and Personal Branding. She is a featured contributor with Business2Community and is a Constant Contact Community blogger.

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