You want the main site to stay with us and shop.yourcompany.com to open somewhere else: a shop platform, a status page, an application on a server of yours? That takes one DNS record, for that name only, without touching the rest of the domain. The choice between an A record and a CNAME depends on one question: is the destination a number or a name?
A or CNAME: what were you given?
| The destination you were given |
Record type |
Example (illustrative values) |
| An IPv4 address, four numbers separated by dots |
A |
shop → 203.0.113.10 (an IP reserved for examples) |
| An IPv6 address |
AAAA |
shop → an address containing colons |
| A server or service name |
CNAME |
shop → the name the service gives you to point at |
If the service asks for a CNAME, it is because its address changes without notice and it wants to be the one to change it. If it gives you an IP, use the A. When in doubt, the service always says which of the two it wants.
Creating the record in cPanel
| 1 |
Confirm where the domain’s DNS lives. The record is created where the nameservers are, not where the domain was bought. If they are ours, it is in cPanel; if they belong to another provider or to Cloudflare, it is there. See nameservers: what they are and which ones to use with us.
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| 2 |
In cPanel, open the Zone Editor and, next to the domain, Manage.
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| 3 |
See whether the name already exists. If the subdomain was created earlier under Domains, cPanel left a record there pointing at this account. Edit that record instead of creating a second one.
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| 4 |
Choose Add Record, the type (A or CNAME), type just the subdomain name (for example shop) and the destination the service gave you. Save.
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| 5 |
Confirm from the outside. On Windows, nslookup shop.yourcompany.com at the command prompt; on Linux and macOS, dig shop.yourcompany.com +short. The answer must be the destination you typed. Propagation takes its time: how long DNS changes take to propagate.
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A CNAME cannot sit beside another record on the same name. If shop already has an A, delete the A before creating the CNAME. A CNAME is also not used on the domain itself (with no subdomain): there the A applies, or whatever the service says.
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Pointing is not enough: the other side must know the name. Almost every service asks you to add your custom domain in its own settings. Without that, the address gets there and the service answers with an error or with its own page, and it is the commonest reason for “I pointed it and it does not open”. The padlock certificate is then issued by that service, not by our server.
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Tell us the subdomain and the destination the service gave you, and we will tell you the record to create.
Open a support ticket
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