Custom Domain Hosting

Your Pendium site is always live at pendium.ai/{your-username}. Custom domain hosting lets you also serve it on a domain you own by pointing DNS at Pendium. Visitors and AI crawlers see your brand on the URL; Pendium serves the same content.

This is the Custom domain option in Site → Setup → Domain Connect. It takes either:

• a subdomain — agents.yourdomain.com, blog.yourdomain.com — which leaves your main site completely untouched, or
• your root domain — yourdomain.com — which carries full root-domain authority but replaces whatever currently serves your main site.

You don't choose a DNS record type. Enter the domain and Pendium works it out: a subdomain gets a CNAME, a root domain gets A records, because DNS forbids a CNAME at a zone root. Everything below applies to both unless it says otherwise.

If you're pointing a root domain at us, read Root domains first — it's the one path that can take your existing site offline.

Which option to pick

Domain Connect offers two ways to put the site on your domain, and the custom-domain option itself splits in two:

The common case is a subdomain: fastest, and nothing you already run can break.

Pick subpath when you want full root-domain authority and want to keep your existing homepage — it serves the site underneath a site you still control.

Pick a root domain only when the site is meant to be your website.

Root (apex) domains

You can point a bare root domain — yourdomain.com, with no agents. or www. in front — at Pendium here. The record type is different, because DNS forbids a CNAME at a zone root: a root domain uses A records instead.

The wizard works this out for you. Enter yourdomain.com and it shows A records with the host @; enter agents.yourdomain.com and it shows a CNAME. You don't pick the record type.

A root domain sends your whole site to Pendium. The wizard asks you to confirm this before it connects one.

Unlike a subdomain, the root is where your main website usually lives. Pointing its A records at Pendium means yourdomain.com serves your site, and anything previously hosted there stops being reachable at that address. Only do this when the site is meant to be your site. If you want to keep your existing homepage and add the site underneath it, use subpath hosting.

Two more things that only matter for a root domain:

• Remove any AAAA (IPv6) record on the root. Pendium publishes A records only, so a leftover AAAA keeps sending IPv6 visitors to your old host — the site works for some people and not others. Verification refuses to pass while an AAAA is present, and tells you which one to remove.
• Every A record on the root must be Pendium's. If you leave an old A record alongside the new one, a share of visitors still land on your previous host. Verification checks that the root resolves exclusively to Pendium.

Some registrars offer ALIAS / ANAME records (or CNAME flattening) as a way around the no-CNAME-at-root rule. Verification reads whatever addresses the root actually resolves to, so one of those passes only if it happens to resolve to the exact values the wizard shows. Use the plain A records the wizard gives you — that's the path we test, and it works at every registrar.

Connecting, verifying, or disconnecting a domain are write actions — an account in read-only mode can view its hosting setup but not change it.

How it works

1. You pick a domain (e.g. agents.yourdomain.com, or your root yourdomain.com) in the Domain Connect wizard.
2. Pendium registers it with its edge and hands you the DNS records to add.
3. You add the records at your DNS provider and click Verify.
4. Once verified, requests to agents.yourdomain.com resolve to Pendium's edge, which serves your site.
5. When you make the subdomain your primary destination, pendium.ai/{your-username} permanently redirects (HTTP 308) to it, so the authority consolidates on your branded URL.

Prerequisites

• A Starter or Pro plan (custom domains aren't available on the free tier).
• A subdomain — or the root domain itself — on a domain you control, with access to its DNS settings.
• If you proxy DNS through Cloudflare, you'll set the record to DNS only (grey cloud) — see troubleshooting below.

Setup

1. Open Site → Setup → Domain Connect and choose Custom domain.

2. Enter the domain you want — a prefix (e.g. agents, which becomes agents.yourdomain.com), a full hostname, or a root domain like yourdomain.com.

3. Pendium provisions the domain and shows you the DNS records to add. There are up to two:

   A record or CNAME record (always required) — points your domain at Pendium's edge. Which one you get depends on what you entered.

   For a subdomain (agents.yourdomain.com):

   Field	Value
   Type	CNAME
   Name / Host	agents (or agents.yourdomain.com, depending on your provider)
   Value / Target	cname.vercel-dns.com (or the exact target the wizard shows)

   For a root domain (yourdomain.com):

   Field	Value
   Type	A
   Name / Host	@ (some providers want the domain itself, or an empty field)
   Value / Target	the IP address the wizard shows

   If the wizard lists more than one A record, add all of them.

   The address is issued per-domain, so the wizard looks it up rather than printing a standard one. If it says it couldn't look up the address, don't change your DNS yet — reopen the panel in a moment. Verification checks the exact value assigned to your domain, so a guessed address won't pass.

   TXT record (shown only when ownership verification is needed) — proves you own the domain:

   Field	Value
   Type	TXT
   Name / Host	the exact name the wizard shows (e.g. _vercel.yourdomain.com)
   Value	the token the wizard shows

   Always copy the exact values from the wizard — the record target and TXT token are issued per-domain.

4. Add the record(s) at your DNS provider (GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Route 53, Namecheap, etc.).

5. Back in the wizard, click Verify. Pendium confirms domain ownership and does a live DNS lookup to check your record resolves.

6. After verification succeeds, click Make this my primary destination to consolidate canonical links and the pendium.ai → subdomain redirect on your branded URL.

Verification

Clicking Verify runs two checks:

1. Ownership — Pendium confirms the TXT record (when one was issued) so no one else can claim your domain.
2. DNS resolution — Pendium does a live lookup to confirm your record points at its edge. For a subdomain that's the CNAME target; for a root domain it's the A records, and the root must resolve only to Pendium with no AAAA record left behind.

DNS changes can take anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours to propagate, depending on your provider and TTL. If verification fails right after you add the records, wait and retry.

Unlike subpath hosting, there's no "set as primary anyway" override here. Your domain either resolves to Pendium's edge or it doesn't — the check is deterministic, so a failure means the DNS hasn't propagated yet (or a stale record is still in the zone), not that an edge bot filter is blocking an otherwise-working setup. Fix the record or wait for propagation and re-verify rather than forcing it.

Troubleshooting

What happens after you verify

• Your site is reachable at your domain — Profile, FAQ, feed, and posts all render under it.
• What the home URL (agents.yourdomain.com/) serves follows the same Home rule as pendium.ai/{your-username}: your AI-designed homepage when your site includes one and it's published, otherwise your Profile, then your feed, then your first published page. Pick a different Home any time in the site settings, and the home URL follows it. AI crawlers get the lightweight variant of whichever surface it serves.
• When the domain is your primary destination, pendium.ai/{your-username} and its paths return a 308 redirect to the matching path on your domain, so links and crawlers consolidate on your branded URL.
• If you verify the domain but keep a different primary destination, it stays connected and 301-redirects to that primary until you switch. This now covers every page type: when your primary is subpath hosting, Profile/FAQ/Services and your other pages redirect to the matching path on your subpath (e.g. yourdomain.com/agents/profile), not back to a pendium.ai URL — so authority consolidates entirely on your own domain.

Disconnecting

On a root domain, change your DNS first. Disconnect unregisters the domain from Pendium's edge immediately, but your A records keep sending visitors to us until you repoint them and the old values age out of DNS caches. Disconnecting first therefore takes your main site down for the whole propagation window. The safe order is:

1. Point the root's A records at whatever should serve the domain next.
2. Wait until the new destination actually resolves.
3. Then click Disconnect in the wizard.

On a subdomain, order doesn't matter — nothing else is served there. Click Disconnect in the wizard, then remove the CNAME at your DNS provider.

Either way, Disconnect unregisters the domain from Pendium's edge, clears the verification, and reverts your primary destination to your pendium.ai/{your-username} site URL. Remove the TXT ownership record too once you're done.