I connected my domain but it's stuck
You followed the steps, added the records, waited the few hours everyone says to wait — and your address still isn't showing your site. Or it loads but the padlock is missing. Or you're staring at an error page with a number on it. This is the most opaque kind of website problem, because the chain between "typing your address" and "seeing your site" has several links, any one of which can be the stuck one — and they all fail silently.
On a bernard-hosted site you don't have to guess. Ask, and bernard walks the whole chain and reports back in plain English:
- What the domain registry says versus what the wider internet has cached — this catches the classic stall after you've moved your domain or its DNS to a new company, where the old settings linger for hours.
- Each record you added, checked letter-for-letter at the company that actually answers for your domain — a stray space, a trailing dot or a "helpful" auto-edit by your registrar all get caught here, with a plain-English note about what's off.
- The security-certificate step — the padlock — including the specific error pages that look alarming but have a known, fixable cause.
- Whether your site is actually being served to a visitor right now.
The answer comes back as a one-line verdict plus the single step that's blocking you — and, crucially, whose side it's on: something to change where you manage your domain, or something bernard finishes automatically once the records are right. That distinction saves the worst hour of this whole process, the one spent re-checking things that were already correct.
How it works
- Connect bernard to your AI (once). Log in to bernard, open your site, go to Use your own AI, and paste the setup prompt into your AI to connect it — a one-time setup.
- Paste it into your AI — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whichever you already use — then ask using the prompt above. The check is read-only: it looks, it never changes.
- Do the one thing it names. Usually it's a single record to correct — bernard notices once it's right and completes the switch-over on its own.
If you haven't started connecting a domain yet, begin with Connect my own web address (domain) to my site — most stalls are avoided by copying the records exactly as shown. And if the optional email records are the part misbehaving, that has its own guide: I added the email records but they're not working yet. Moved off an old website address entirely? See My old address is still on the site.
The prompt
“My domain [www.yourname.com] still isn't working on my site — walk through the whole chain and tell me exactly which step is stuck, whether it's something I need to change where I manage my domain or something on bernard's side, and what to do next.”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Connect bernard to your AI over MCP — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI — then paste the prompt above.
Questions people ask
- How long should I wait before deciding my domain is actually stuck?
- A few hours is normal — changes to domain records take time to spread across the internet. If it's been a day, or you're seeing an error page rather than just your old site, stop waiting and ask bernard to diagnose it: a genuine stall doesn't fix itself.
- Will asking bernard to check my domain change anything?
- No — the diagnosis is purely a look, and it never touches your records or your site. Bernard tells you what it found and what to do; any actual change is either one you make where you manage your domain, or a bernard-side step that completes automatically. Nothing about your live site changes without your approval.
- The site loads but there's no padlock — is that serious?
- It means the security certificate hasn't been issued yet, which is a specific, findable stall — usually one record missing or slightly wrong. Ask bernard to check: it looks at the certificate step directly and tells you whether it's waiting on you or just on time.