Your Own Domain

A Name of Your Own

Your site already works at an address like my-website.pages.dev. That’s completely fine to share.

But a domain (your own web address, like alexdraws.com) feels more yours, and it’s easier to remember. It’s optional, and it costs a little money each year, but it’s a lovely finishing touch.

How a Name Finds a Site

Computers don’t actually find each other by name. They find each other by addresses made of numbers. Names are just for humans.

So the internet has a giant address book that turns names into locations. It’s called DNS (the Domain Name System).

Every time someone types your domain, their browser quietly looks it up in the address book first, then goes to wherever the book says.

Connecting a domain just means adding one line to the address book: “this name lives at my Pages site.”

Step 1: Buy a Domain

You buy (really, rent by the year) a domain from a registrar (a company that sells domain names).

  • Cloudflare sells domains too, at cost price, right in the same dashboard. That’s the simplest option, because everything stays in one place.
  • Other popular registrars work fine too.

A few tips for choosing:

  • Short and easy to spell out loud.
  • .com is the most familiar, but there are many others (.me, .art, .dev, and so on).
  • Avoid hyphens and numbers if you can. They’re hard to say.

Step 2: Connect It to Your Pages Site

In the Cloudflare dashboard:

  1. Open Workers & Pages, and click your project.
  2. Open the Custom domains tab.
  3. Click Set up a custom domain, and type your domain.
  4. Follow the steps. If you bought the domain from Cloudflare, it writes the address book line for you.

It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for the address book to update everywhere. Don’t panic if it doesn’t work right away.

If you get stuck on any step, take a screenshot and ask Claude what it means.

The Padlock

When your domain is connected, Cloudflare automatically sets up HTTPS (a secure, encrypted connection between the visitor and your site).

That’s the little padlock in the address bar. It tells visitors the connection is safe, and browsers show warnings on sites without it. You get it for free, without doing anything.

The Same Loop, Every Time

From here, every new idea for your site goes around the loop you already know: describe it, plan it, build it, save it, ship it. A new page, a new look, a whole new site: same five steps.

You didn’t just build a website. You learned how to build anything you can describe.