Connect a custom domain

Every forum gets a free subdomain ({your-forum}.myforumcat.com). On the Pro plan you can also point your own domain at your portal, so customers see forum.yourcompany.com instead.

Where it lives

Open Custom domain in the dashboard sidebar (/w/{your-forum}/domain), directly below Team. Visible to the forum owner and admin only, see Sign in to your dashboard for what every role can reach. On Basic, this page shows an upgrade prompt instead of the connect form.

Connect your domain

1. Type your domain (for example forum.yourcompany.com, or a bare domain like yourcompany.com) and click Connect.

2. We add it as a hostname on our side and hand you back two DNS records to add at your domain provider, both required. The Name we show for each record is relative to your domain (for example forum instead of forum.yourcompany.com), since most DNS providers add your domain automatically to whatever you type in a record’s Name field, so typing the full domain there would create a doubled, broken record.

   • A CNAME on your domain itself, pointing at Forumcat. This is the record that actually routes traffic to your portal.
   • A second CNAME starting with _acme-challenge. This one lets us validate and maintain your SSL certificate automatically, including future renewals, so you add it once and never have to touch it again.

   Add both records as plain DNS records, with no proxying. If your DNS provider is Cloudflare, set the cloud icon to DNS only (grey) on both records: a proxied (orange cloud) routing record sends your visitors down a path that skips your portal entirely, so the domain will not load until it is switched to DNS only.

3. Add both records exactly as shown at your DNS provider. DNS changes usually show up within a few minutes, but can take a few hours depending on your provider and your domain’s cache settings.

4. We automatically check on your domain about once an hour, so once both the hostname and its SSL certificate validate, it goes live and starts serving your portal over HTTPS on its own, no dashboard visit needed. Click Refresh status any time if you don’t want to wait for the next automatic check.

Your Forumcat subdomain keeps working the whole time, before and after your custom domain goes active, so there’s no downtime while you wait on DNS.

Once your domain shows Active, it takes over everywhere customers see a link back to your portal: sign-in emails, and the links search engines use to index your pages, all switch to your own domain instead of your Forumcat subdomain. Your subdomain keeps working too, it just stops being the “canonical” address once your own domain is live. Once active, your Forumcat subdomain redirects to your domain, so anyone who still visits it lands on your own domain instead.

Your dashboard follows too: the address shown above your forum’s pages and the View portal button both open your own domain instead of your Forumcat subdomain, and a staff member clicking either one signs in on it directly. The same is true the other way: clicking Dashboard from your portal’s account menu signs you into the dashboard directly too, so moving between your portal and your dashboard never means signing in twice, whichever direction you’re going.

The Custom domain page also updates itself once your domain is active: the DNS records and Refresh status button go away, since there’s nothing left to add or refresh, and you’ll see a link to visit your portal right on your own domain.

After Active, allow up to about a minute before it actually starts serving. This is on top of the DNS wait in step 3: once your DNS records are correct and we show both the hostname and certificate as Active, there’s a short internal delay (our own systems catching up) before every request to your domain is actually served, not just some of them. If a visitor hits your domain in that narrow window, they’ll see a “not found” page rather than your portal - refreshing a minute or so later resolves it, no action needed on your end.

Spam protection

The ask form’s spam protection works automatically on your custom domain, same as it does on your Forumcat subdomain. There’s nothing to configure, no code to add: it’s set up on our side the moment your domain shows Active.

Disconnecting

Click Disconnect and confirm. Your portal falls back to your Forumcat subdomain immediately; the domain itself is unaffected until you remove the DNS records at your provider.

Managing your domain from the API or an agent

Everything on this page (connect, check status, disconnect) is also available over the REST API and the MCP server, using an owner or admin API key. Handy if you’d rather script your domain setup, or let an agent manage it for you, than click through the dashboard.

Notes

• Your certificate renews on its own. Once the _acme-challenge record is in place, we handle every future certificate renewal automatically. You will never need to add or update a validation record for this domain again.
• One custom domain per forum. Reconnecting to a different domain replaces the one you had, it doesn’t add a second.
• A domain already connected to another Forumcat forum can’t be connected to yours, verify you’re using a domain (or subdomain of one) you actually control.
• Your own domain, and Forumcat’s own domains, can’t be used as a custom domain (they’re reserved).
• If you’ve set up Google sign-in, connecting or disconnecting your custom domain changes the redirect URI Google needs, so you’ll need to re-register it there too, see that guide’s “If your redirect URI changes” section.