Website domains
Use your website's free address, connect your own domain with two DNS records, make it the main address and disconnect it again.
Every Smileline website has a free address from the moment it's created. You can also connect a domain of your own, such as www.yourpractice.co.uk. Websites are for practices in the United Kingdom and the United States: on pay-as-you-go each live website is £0.20 a month (VAT included) or $0.25, and on the older price list they're part of the SEO & Ads add-on.
Connecting your own domain may not be available yet. Until it is, your website uses its free address, which works in every way described here.
Your free address
The free address is made from the website's name when you create it, such as smile-dental.smileline.site. It works as soon as you publish, with its own security certificate.
When you make your own domain the main address, the free address sends visitors there, keeping the page and anything after ?. If you archive the website, its free address is given up for good and never handed to anyone else; restoring the website gives it a new one.
Connect your own domain
Connecting a domain needs Connect providers, manage lead forms & draft campaigns and the add-on.
On the website, add the domain you want to use, such as www.yourpractice.co.uk or offers.yourpractice.co.uk.
At your DNS host, add the two records Smileline shows you:
- a TXT record named
_smileline-site.followed by your domain, holding the value shown. It proves the domain is yours, and Smileline connects nothing until it sees it. Keep it in place: until the domain is live, and before a domain that stopped working goes live again, Smileline reads it again at every check, and if it has gone the domain waits for it to be added back; - a CNAME record from your domain to the address shown,
sites.followed by Smileline's websites domain.
Smileline recognises the common DNS hosts and shows their own steps. If your domain's DNS is on Cloudflare, Smileline can add both records for you with a Cloudflare API token for that zone; the token is used once and never stored.
Smileline checks the records for you: every 5 minutes for 2 hours, every 30 minutes for the rest of the day, then every 6 hours for a week. You can also ask it to check now. Once it sees the TXT record it sets up the certificate; if the certificate needs a record of its own, Smileline shows that too.
The domain is active when its certificate is ready and its CNAME points at Smileline. If the week ends first, checking stops and the domain shows what's missing, with Retry to start again.
Your bare domain
A domain without www, such as yourpractice.co.uk, usually can't hold a CNAME. Either set your registrar to forward it to www.yourpractice.co.uk, or, if your DNS host flattens CNAMEs (Cloudflare does), connect it as a second address: it sends visitors on to the www address. A flattened domain counts as pointing at Smileline only when every address it answers with — IPv4 (A) and IPv6 (AAAA) alike — is Smileline's, so remove any A or AAAA records your previous host left behind.
Moving your existing website
If your domain already points at your current website, add both records — and the certificate record, if Smileline shows one — before you change the CNAME. The certificate is then ready before the switch, and visitors never see an error while it happens.
Make it the main address
Once a domain is active, make it the website's main address. Then:
- every other address of the website sends visitors to it, keeping the page and the query;
- search engines, the sitemap and links to the website's pages use it;
- campaigns linked to the website's pages follow it, as described in Campaigns follow the page.
If a domain stops working
Smileline checks every active domain once a day, on the same three things as when it went live: Cloudflare's hostname and its certificate are both active, and the domain points at Smileline. If any of them stops — the CNAME now points somewhere else, say, or the certificate is being issued again — the domain is marked with the reason and the free address becomes the main address. Once all three hold again, the domain is active again by itself and takes back the main address, unless another of your own domains has become the main address meanwhile.
A domain another website is still using can't be connected until it's released there. A domain that moves from one practice to another always has to be proved again with its TXT record.
Disconnect a domain
Disconnecting a domain stops the website answering on it straight away and then removes its certificate. If it was the main address, the free address becomes the main address again, and linked campaigns follow. Disconnecting doesn't need the add-on. Once its removal has finished, the domain can be connected to another website.
Website connections
See what every page of a Smileline website is connected to — tracking, the cookie banner, call tracking, chat, online booking, instant AI callbacks and conversion tracking.
Website search and blog
How Smileline websites appear in search — page titles and descriptions, share images, hidden pages, the sitemap, structured data, redirects, and articles from Articles.