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Custom Hostname Setup

If you elect to use a custom hostname for your changelog page, you will need to set it on your Public Feed settings first.

After setting the custom hostname (eg changelog.mysite.com) you need to point the DNS records of this hostname to our servers.

In order to point the hostname, create a CNAME record targeting cname.announcekit.app at your DNS provider:

  changelog.mysite.com CNAME cname.announcekit.app.

DNS changes usually propagate within a few minutes, but can occasionally take up to 24–48 hours depending on your provider and the record’s previous TTL. You can check the status anytime with the Verify button next to the custom hostname field in your feed settings.

Using Cloudflare? Set the record to “DNS only”

This is the single most common setup mistake, so please double-check it.

If your DNS is managed by Cloudflare (or another proxying CDN such as Fastly or Akamai), the CNAME record must not be proxied:

  • In Cloudflare, click the orange cloud next to the record so it turns grey (“DNS only”).
  • Leave it grey permanently — not just during setup.

Why: when the record is proxied (orange cloud), visitors connect to Cloudflare instead of our servers. We never see the traffic for your hostname, so we cannot verify the domain, cannot issue its SSL certificate, and cannot serve your changelog. The page will show certificate errors or fail to load — often intermittently, which makes it confusing to debug.

You don’t lose anything by using “DNS only”: we terminate SSL and serve your changelog directly, no extra proxy needed.

SSL

We automatically create and renew SSL certificates for custom domains — no steps required from you. Just create the CNAME record (unproxied, see above) and leave the rest to us. The first certificate is issued within seconds of the first visit once DNS points to us.

Troubleshooting

If your changelog doesn’t load over your custom domain or shows a certificate error:

  1. Check the record isn’t proxied. On Cloudflare the cloud icon must be grey (“DNS only”), not orange. This causes the vast majority of issues.

  2. Check the target. The CNAME must point exactly to cname.announcekit.app — you can confirm what the world sees with:

      dig +short changelog.mysite.com CNAME

    The answer should be cname.announcekit.app.. If it prints nothing or something else, the record is missing, still propagating, or proxied.

  3. Check the hostname matches. The hostname in your feed settings must be exactly the same as the DNS record you created (including the subdomain).

  4. Still stuck? Contact us via the in-app messenger and include your hostname — we can see the verification status on our side.

Removing a custom domain

If you stop using your custom domain, please remove both the hostname from your feed settings and the CNAME record from your DNS. A leftover CNAME keeps sending your visitors to a changelog that no longer exists, and they will see certificate errors.

User Tracking and Segmentation on Public Feed

If you want your Custom hosted public feed to recognize Segmentation rules and enable User Tracking, please get the updated widget code from the Dashboard and update it on your web page.