All About URLs and CNAME Records

Understanding URLs

A URL is a web address. For example, our support site is located at https://www.websitetoolbox.com/support.

Every URL consists of three parts:

• Subdomain: www
• Domain name: websitetoolbox.com
• Path: /support

These parts work together to tell your browser where to find the page.

Understanding CNAMEs

A CNAME allows your web address to display pages hosted on another domain.

Your Website Toolbox forum is hosted on our servers at websitetoolbox.com. When you create your forum, it initially appears on a built-in domain like yourusername.discussion.community, but you can configure it to appear on your own domain instead.

With a CNAME, you can point something like forum.yourdomain.com to your forum without any complicated setup.

To get started, follow our guide to connecting your domain to your forum. For provider-specific instructions, see our step-by-step instructions for popular domain providers.

If you still need help, please contact us.