Each dedicated IPFS gateway from Pinata comes with the option to add a custom domain. Custom domains allow your gateway to live at a URL on the web like alice.com as opposed to alice.mypinata.cloud. Let's take a look at how we would add a custom domain to an existing gateway.

You must own or have access to the DNS records of the domain that you wish to use with your Pinata Gateway.

If you don't already have a custom domain you can use for your gateway, you will need to purchase one. There are numerous domain registrars available. In fact, there are so many that it would be foolish for us to try to recommend any particular registrar.

If you're not sure where to look, a simple google search for "domain registrar" should point you in the right direction.

Setting up a custom domain on your gateway is a two-step process. The first step is configuring it through Pinata. The second is configuring it through your domain registrar.

Once you have your domain, you can start the process of configuring it through the Pinata interface. While logged into your Pinata account, click on the Gateways tab.

Next, you'll need to click on the three-dot menu icon to the far-right side of the gateway that you'd like to add a custom domain for. This will open a context menu with more options. Click the "Add Custom Domain" option.

This will pop up a modal that will ask you for your custom domain. If you are setting up a domain on www.alice.com, you would enter that. See the section below for more information about picking a custom domain. Once you've added your custom domain, you just need to click the "Add" button.

When you set up your custom domain, you'll want to think about how you want that domain to work. You might want to use a subdomain, like ipfs.alice.com. Or, you may want to use your root domain (this is the domain that includes the www). To do so, you would enter www.alice.com. You may even want to use a naked subdomain. This would be a domain like alice.com. Notice there is no "www" ahead of alice?

Each of these options requires a slightly different DNS configuration. Fortunately, Pinata makes this easy in the next step.

Now it's time to configure your DNS records through your domain registrar. You'll see a yellow warning indicator letting you know that you still need to configure DNS. You'll need to click that.

When you click that button, you'll be presented with the configuration settings you'll need to provide to your registrar. These settings are specific to the type of domain you are using (root, subdomain, naked subdomain).

The above example is telling me that if I want my gateway to live at www.alice.com, I need to create a CNAME record in my DNS entries through my domain registrar and point the www value to alice.mypinata.cloud.

Each domain registrar may have slightly different ways of configuring DNS records. For the most part, though, you'll be able to choose the record type (CNAME), enter the host and the value. The host will be, in this case, www. The value will be alice.mypinata.cloud. Here's what this looks like on Namecheap:

This will look different for each domain registrar, so it's important to follow any guides and documentation they provide.

After you've configured your DNS record, the process is usually pretty quick for your custom domain to be available. The Pinata Gateways page will no longer show "Check DNS Configuration" when everything is set up correctly. It will, instead, show, "DNS Configured". You will need to refresh the window to check for updates to your gateway's DNS configuration.

If your custom domain does not show as configured within 24 hours, please contact us.