Put a published collection on your own domain

Your published help centre, blog or view can live at your own address, such as help.yourcompany.com, instead of its Fieldwerk address. A workspace admin types the address into the collection's Publish tab, you add the one DNS record Fieldwerk shows at your DNS provider, and Fieldwerk checks it, sets up the secure certificate and tells you when the site is live. That usually takes under an hour.

Custom domains are on Pro. Publish the collection first, as described in Publish a collection as a read-only page.

Who can add a custom domain

Workspace admins who can manage the collection add, check and remove its domain.
Collection managers who aren't workspace admins request one. Under Custom domain they type the address, add an optional note and click Request. The address then shows Requested until an admin decides. Every workspace admin is told in the bell and by email, and can Approve or Decline it in Workspace settings > Domains, in Recommended actions, or in the collection's own Publish tab. Approving adds the domain at once and tells the person who asked; then someone adds the DNS record as below.
The workspace must be on Pro, which includes 20 custom domains per workspace. A domain counts while it's attached to a collection, and a bare domain counts once with its www. The plan is checked only when a domain is added, so a domain that's already live keeps working if the workspace leaves Pro.
Allow custom domains must be on, in Workspace settings > Domains. It's on unless an admin turns it off. Off stops new domains and requests; domains already set up keep working until someone removes them.

Before you start

Publish the collection. Until it's live, the field is greyed out with "Publish first, then add your own address."
Pick a subdomain you own, such as help.yourcompany.com or docs.yourcompany.com, and make sure you, or whoever runs your domain, can add DNS records for it.
A bare domain works too, with its www. yourcompany.com needs an A record instead of a CNAME, and www.yourcompany.com comes with it: Fieldwerk adds www for you and sends its visitors on to yourcompany.com, once you add a CNAME record for www as well.
Some addresses can't be used: wildcards (*.yourcompany.com), IP addresses, and addresses on fieldwerk.ai, fieldmemo.io, vercel.app or vercel.com.
One domain per collection. To change it, remove the old one first.

Add your domain

Open the collection, click Collection settings and choose the Publish tab.
Click the site's address above the preview to open Address and access.
Under Custom domain, type your address, such as help.yourcompany.com, and click Add.
Fieldwerk shows the record to add as a card, headed with its type, such as CNAME record. The card has the record's Name and Value, each with its own copy button. For a subdomain it's one CNAME record. For a bare domain it's two: an A record for yourcompany.com, and a CNAME record named www for www.yourcompany.com. Copy each value exactly as shown. It's set for Fieldwerk, so don't use a value from another guide.
If a TXT record card is shown too, add both. It appears when the domain is used on another Vercel account, and proves the domain is yours.
Sign in to your DNS provider (where your domain's DNS is managed, often the company you bought it from) and add the record:
- Type: CNAME, A or TXT, as shown.
- Name: what Fieldwerk shows, such as help. Most providers add your domain to the end for you; some want the full name, such as help.yourcompany.com.
- Value (some providers say Target or Points to): paste the value you copied.
Help for your DNS provider, at the bottom of the panel, links to the steps for Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Cloud DNS / Squarespace Domains, Route 53, Microsoft 365 / Azure, 1st Domains and Crazy Domains.
On Cloudflare, set the record to DNS only (the grey cloud), not proxied. Otherwise the certificate can't be issued. If your domain's DNS is on Cloudflare, Fieldwerk spots it and shows an Open Cloudflare DNS button, which opens your domain's DNS records in Cloudflare, with this tip and the next one beneath it.
If your domain has CAA records, add one that allows letsencrypt.org.

It's safe to close the pane now. Fieldwerk keeps checking and emails you when the domain is live.

What happens next

The domain moves through these states, shown as a label beside it in the Publish tab and in Workspace settings > Domains:

Waiting for DNS: Fieldwerk hasn't found the right record yet, and says why, such as "No CNAME record found".
Setting up certificate: DNS is right and the secure certificate is on its way. This usually takes a few minutes.
Live: the site answers at your address. The domain becomes a link to the site. For its first 15 minutes it also says "Just went live. If the old page still shows, refresh; some networks take a few minutes."
Not working: the domain was live and has failed two checks in a row. See If it isn't working.

Under a waiting domain, Fieldwerk shows when it last checked. A waiting domain is checked every few minutes for its first day, then every hour. Click Re-check to check straight away. DNS changes usually show within an hour and can take up to 48 hours.

Until the domain is live, anyone who visits your address sees a plain "This site is being set up" page. The site shows there a few minutes after it goes live.

When the domain goes live, every workspace admin, and whoever requested it, gets a bell notification and an email: "help.yourcompany.com is live".

A domain still waiting after 7 days is let go. In its last two days it shows in Recommended actions, and when it's let go admins are told "We stopped waiting for help.yourcompany.com". Add it again whenever you're ready. To stop waiting sooner, open the ⋯ menu beside the domain and choose Remove domain.

Once it's live

The whole site is at your address: the home page, every article or post, section and category pages, each page's Markdown copy, llms.txt, robots.txt and the sitemap, plus feed.xml for a blog. Their links use your address.
The Publish tab shows your domain as the site's address above the preview, and its copy and open buttons use it. In Address and access, the Fieldwerk address is listed under Also at. The domain's ⋯ menu has Copy address.
The Fieldwerk address redirects to the same page on your domain, so links already shared keep working.
www goes to your bare domain. For a bare domain, www.yourcompany.com sends visitors on to the same page on yourcompany.com. If its CNAME record isn't there yet, the Publish tab shows it under your live domain, with Re-check.
Password and expiry still apply. A visitor who entered the password on the Fieldwerk address enters it again on your domain.
Nobody signs in on your domain. Everyone, members included, sees what any visitor sees.
A missing page shows the site's own "Page not found" page, with your workspace's picture and a way back to the home page.
Your own analytics run on your domain only, never on the Fieldwerk address. On Pro, go to Analytics in the Publish tab, add a PostHog project key (with its region), a Google Analytics measurement ID or a Mixpanel project token, then make the change live. The label beside Analytics says whether they run: On; Waiting for domain while your domain is being set up; Off when there's no domain yet (with Set up a domain) or the site isn't published; or Pro if your plan doesn't include them.
Fieldwerk keeps checking a live domain every few hours. If it stops working, every admin is told in the bell and by email, it goes to the top of Recommended actions, and the site stays open at its Fieldwerk address while you fix it.

Change or remove the domain

Remove it: in Address and access, or in Workspace settings > Domains, open the ⋯ menu beside the domain, choose Remove domain, then click Remove to confirm. It's detached at once: the site goes back to its Fieldwerk address, and your domain shows "This address isn't in use". A bare domain's www is removed with it.
Then delete the record at your DNS provider (for a bare domain, the www record too). Until you do, Fieldwerk keeps the name reserved for your workspace, so nobody else can point it at their own site. Once the record has stopped pointing at Fieldwerk for three daily checks in a row, the name is let go. Until then Workspace settings > Domains lists it under Not in use, and after 30 days Recommended actions reminds you the record is still there.
Use it again in the same workspace: add it to any collection. There's no wait.
Move it to another workspace: remove it here and delete the record. Once the name has been let go, add it in the other workspace. To skip the wait, contact Fieldwerk support.
Switch to a different domain: remove the old one, then add the new one.
Unpublish the collection: the domain stays attached, so nobody else can take the name, and your address shows "This site isn't published". Publish again and it's back. If a site stays unpublished or not working for 30 days, admins are reminded ("help.yourcompany.com isn't showing anything"), and again at 90 days.

Have your AI do it

Once your AI is connected to Fieldwerk (see Connect Claude to Fieldwerk or Connect ChatGPT to Fieldwerk), it can do the same and walk you through the DNS step:

publish_collection with custom_domain adds the address (workspace admins), or removes it with an empty string. Its analytics field sets the site's own analytics. The result lists the record to add.
check_collection_domain checks now and returns the status (pending, verifying, active or misconfigured), the reason and the records. get_collection_sharing reports the same under custom_domain.
request_collection_domain asks the workspace admins, for a collection manager who isn't one.
list_workspace_domains lists the workspace's domains and requests, answers a request with decide, and turns Allow custom domains on or off with allowed. list_admin_actions shows Recommended actions.

Try this with your AI assistant

In Fieldwerk, help me put one of my published collections on my own domain. Show me my published collections and ask which one, and ask me for the address I want to use. Check with me before you add it, then tell me exactly which DNS record to add. If my plan or role doesn't allow it, tell me what's needed.

Open in Claude Open in ChatGPT

If it isn't working

"No CNAME record found" (or "No A record found" for a bare domain): the record isn't there yet, or it's under the wrong name. If your provider adds the domain for you and you typed the full name, the record ends up at help.yourcompany.com.yourcompany.com. On Cloudflare, a proxied record (orange cloud) can look missing too: set it to DNS only.
"CNAME points somewhere else": an older record for the same name is in the way, or the value isn't the one Fieldwerk showed. Delete any other CNAME, A or AAAA records for that name and paste the value again.
"Another Vercel account uses this domain, add the TXT record": the domain is, or was, connected to another Vercel account. Add the TXT record Fieldwerk shows, as well as the CNAME.
"This domain is already in use on Fieldwerk": another workspace has it, or it's waiting to be let go. If it's yours, contact Fieldwerk support.
Stuck on the certificate for more than an hour: on Cloudflare, check the record is DNS only. If your domain has CAA records, add one allowing letsencrypt.org.
"This site is being set up" at your address: the domain isn't live yet, or has stopped working. Check its state in the Publish tab. If it has just gone live, refresh in a few minutes.
"This site isn't set up" at your address: the address isn't added to any collection on Fieldwerk. Check it's spelled the same as in the Publish tab.
Not working after it was live: the reason is shown beside the domain. Usually the record was changed or deleted, or a proxy was turned on. Fix the record and click Re-check.