Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@mikestone14
Created April 23, 2014 00:08
Show Gist options
  • Save mikestone14/11198630 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save mikestone14/11198630 to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Getting a GoDaddy domain to point to a Heroku app.

Pointing a GoDaddy domain to a Heroku app

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains http://thenomadicfreelancer.blogspot.com/2012/08/pointing-godaddy-domain-to-your-heroku.html

1) Custom Subdomains

For each custom subdomain use domains:add in the Terminal.

heroku domains:add www.example.com

2) Subdomain DNS

Go to the domain's DNS manager and configure it with a CNAME record pointing the subdomain to your herokuapp.com hostname.

Record Name Target
CNAME www example.herokuapp.com

To check that this worked correctly run host www.example.com

3) URL Forwarding

This will work to have www.example.com forward to www.example.herokuapp.com, but it won't work if a user types example.com into the browser.

To get this to work, go to the GoDaddy domain information and set forwarding to www.example.com.

Done!
@btoone
Copy link

btoone commented Jul 6, 2016

Update: The redirect was happening because I didn't realize Rack::CanonicalHost was in place in my app (a default of Suspenders). The APPLICATION_HOST env variable was set to the Heroku app URL instead of the custom URL. Once I updated the env variable everything worked as expected.

@secondstar
Copy link

@caspyin, good point about APPLICATION_HOST env. Thanks!

@dhg
Copy link

dhg commented Jan 16, 2017

This saved me a bunch of time futzing with GoDaddy. Thx man!

@andresgarciag
Copy link

Thanks Man this info same me a lot of time on godaddy , awsome info 👍

@mgrigajtis
Copy link

This does not work.

@LisaBee224
Copy link

@caspyin I'm having the same problem you did--but I can't find where APPLICATION_HOST is in my Rails app! Did you just go to config/environments/production?

@jvr0x
Copy link

jvr0x commented Mar 27, 2017

As other said, saved a lot of time. Thanks!

@labanino
Copy link

labanino commented Apr 3, 2017

I added the domain in Heroku like this, www.mysite.com instead of mysite.com but if I typed in the browser mysite.com I got the Godaddy parked page but the domain forwarding did the trick for the last. Thanks a lot!

@dkumarlinux
Copy link

I tried to do so many time to add cutom domain with heroku by command
heroku domains:add www.mysite.in
Adding www.mysite.in to ⬢ guarded-atoll-####... !
▸ Please verify your account in order to add domains (please enter a credit card) For more information, see
https://devcenter.heroku.com/categories/billing Verify now at https://heroku.com/verify

Even www.mysite.in shows heroku purple page
but not working anymore..

@artemv
Copy link

artemv commented Oct 11, 2017

Just tried it, all went fine except the forwarding that just didn't work at all for my domain. After setting up the forwarding www.mysite.in worked but mysite.in connection timed out. Setting IP manually as per bialikover's link didn't change this.

Resolved only by setting up Cloudflare (free) account and switching GoDaddy domain settings to its nameservers - then all worked like a charm.

@BFMarks
Copy link

BFMarks commented May 22, 2018

I will never use Go Daddy again - terrible

@YahiaBadr
Copy link

YahiaBadr commented Oct 14, 2019

this sounds great! i noticed that my domain on godday is not secured ( not https) however my deployment link on heroku is secured ( uses https) how could i make my domain uses this certificate without buying or renting a certificate that worth a lot of money?! I am using Node and Express as server side, and React as client side. Please if you know something that could help me to make my domain certified and secure i will be thankful!

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment