How to Add and Connect Your Domain in WP Engine

WP Engine is a big player in the web hosting market whereby its service is specialized for WordPress. It is one of the cloud-based WordPress hosting powered by Google Cloud. When you subscribe to a certain plan, you will get a temporary sub-domain under wpengine.com. If you want your website can be accessed via your own domain, you need to add and connect your domain first. This post will show you how.

Adding Your Domain in WP Engine

WP Engine doesn’t offer a domain registration service. It’s a typical of cloud-based managed WordPress hosting. Other WP Engine alternatives such as Kinsta, Pressable, to Flywheel (owned by WP Engine) also don’t offer domain registration service.

Manual setting is required to add your domain if your website is hosted on WP Engine.

To start adding your domain in WP Engine, first, login to WP Engine with your account. On the Sites menu, select a website you want to add the domain to.

On the next page — the settings page, click the Domains menu and click the Add domain button.

Type your domain and click the Add domain button to add your domain.

Note: You can add as many domains as you want, but the number of domains you can connect with your website depend on the plan you subscribe to.

Next, select a domain you want to connect with your website. Click the three-dot icon and select View DNS Details.

Copy the record values on the appearing dialog window (CNAME and A Record) to your favorite editor (e.g., TextEdit). There are three record values provided by WP Engine:

  • CNAME
  • A record
  • A record

Next, login to the website where you bought the domain from (e.g., Namecheap). Select a domain you want to connect with your website on WP Engine. Click Manage or the similar menu.

Find a menu that says DNS Management or the similar name.

Click the Add New Record button to add the record values you have copied earlier.

  • CNAME record:

The first record type you need to add is the CNAME record. After clicking the Add New Record button above, enter your domain to the Domain field. Set the record type to CNAME and enter the CNAME record provided by WP Engine. Click the Add Record button.

  • A record

Once done adding the CNAME record, the next step is to add the A record. Simply click the Add New Record button to add a new record. This time, leave the Domain field empty. Set the record type to A and enter the IP address provided by WP Engine. Click the Add Record button.

Repeat the above steps to add another A record. Make sure to tailor the IP address.

Once done adding the required records, don’t forget to apply the changes by clicking the update button (some domain registrants don’t require this).

Until here, your job is done. Wait until the propagation process is done. You can switch back to WP Engine to refresh the connection status. Click the three-line icon on the domain you are connecting and select Refresh status.

A successfully connected domain has two green checkmarks on the DNS column and the SSL column.

Once your domain is successfully connected, you can make it a primary domain. To do so, click the three-dot icon and select Set as primary.

Fixing the Redirect Issue

After your domain is successfully connected, chances you are you keep being redirected to the default sub-domain provided by WP Engine. This is a common issue if you installed a new, blank website on WP Engine.

To fix the issue, login to your WordPress dashboard by clicking the WP Admin button on the WP Engine dashboard.

On your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings -> General. Replace the default URLs on the WordPress Adress URL field and Site Address URL field with your site URL.

Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button to apply the changes.

The Bottom Line

A website without domain means nothing. No matter how great your website is, visitors will never find it if has no domain. If you have a WordPress website hosted on WP Engine, the crucial step to do after you set up your website is to add and connect your domain. WP Engine offers no domain registration service. Thus, you need to manually connect your domain with your website hosted on it.

If you are a new WP Engine user and find an issue to connect your domain, the post above is aimed at helping you fixing the issue.

This page may contain affiliate links, which help support our project. Read our affiliate disclosure.
Picture of Aliko Sunawang

Aliko Sunawang

Aliko is a WordPress expert and lead blogger at WPPagebuilders. He has been blogging with WordPress since 2013. He is responsible of all content published on this website. Learn more
Want to start a profitable blog with WordPress? OF COURSE!

Leave a Comment

Want to outrank big websites on Google?

Without backlinks, without high DR, without digital PR. Just content optimization.

Click to enlarge.

Hey 👋🏻
Got WordPress knowledge?
Why not turning it into profit? Click the button below to learn how.

Your popup content goes here

50%

Where should we send the template?

After entering your email address, you will be added to our newsletter subscribers. You can unsubscribe anytime.