Domain host advice?

November 1, 2023 4:49 PM

I have a very simple website at Squarespace. I have some questions about domain hosting. Can you advise?

My website is very simple, basically a calling card/resume online. At some point, I noticed that my site said "Not secure." I contacted squarespace and they told me that in order to address this, I had to do it through my domain provider, which is Namecheap. Squarespace gave me the instructions for what to do, but because I'm illiterate when it comes to this stuff, I needed some coaching from Namecheap. Things have not gone well. I've had about a dozen back and forths with Namecheap, a different person responding each time, no one giving me clear, consistent directions for what to do. At this point I'm really frustrated and just want this fixed. Should I switch to a new domain host, that might have been customer service who could help me with this? Or will that just be more headache? Since I'm really out of my element with this stuff, what would be the easiest way for me to resolve this? Thanks for your suggestions.

posted by swheatie to Technology (3 answers total)

Did you try following the Namecheap-specific instructions here?

That aside, I suspect the simplest solution may be to just transfer the domain to squarespace itself. If you do that then I believe squarespace can automatically handle SSL stuff without further manual effort on your part.
posted by advil at 5:02 PM on November 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, setting up a security certificate should be a lot easier than it is. I managed to do it on Namecheap by following their instructions very closely, but ultimately it's a paid service (not much - $10/year or something) and you might as well (as advil wrote just before I hit post) transfer it to squarespace. At the very least you could ask squarespace "if I transfer my domain to be managed by you, can you set up SSL automatically for me?" or something along those lines.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:07 PM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

A lot of this depends on your specific DNS/domain setup, so generic instructions (including the "just transfer the domain to Squarespace" advice) could be just fine or could backfire terribly. I'd be very cautious about transferring the domain if you have, for example, email set up on it or whatever already.

If you want to give more detail about the specific domain that you're trying to solve this for, that would be helpful.
posted by Aleyn at 1:36 PM on November 2, 2023