Domain Mapping with WordPress

In this day and age, it’s quite the norm to own multiple domains for any successful or ambitious website. It helps keep imposters at bay, gives customers better brand recall, and allows the business to expand into new directions in the future.

Regardless, these domains will then have to be connected to the hosting service, and that’s why we need domain mapping. It simply points to and leads visitors to, your web host and website from a domain that has nothing do with the host. Let’s look at how we can domain-map, and the tools we’ll need for this.

Why Do Domains Need Mapping?

To put it simply, there are several reasons why you might want to connect your domain name of choice to the web host that contains your files and website:

• You own multiple domain names, but they all need to connect to the same website.
• One of your many domain names isn’t available with or purchased from, the hosting provider that has your website server.
• You want to upgrade to a new CMS (Content Management System) while retaining the links in your website.

How to Map Your Domains

Whichever your web host might be, you’ll need to be comfortable getting on its control panel or dashboard area. Also, since mapping domains is a bi-directional (or two-way) process, you’ll want to provide information about your web host back to the domain registrar as well. Follow these steps to get started:

Manage the Domain Names from the Dashboard

Locate the ‘Domains’ section in your web host dashboard, and on this screen, you’d be looking for the Canonical Name or the CNAME record. This is what you need to provide to the domain name registrar so that it can, in turn, know where to point users who hit up your domain name.

Do check with the registrar to see what information they’ll accept, and if you want to know which domain registrar you’re with, you can look it up on the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Lookup page. Next, you’ll have to add your domain details to the web host account as well.

Enter Domain Details to the Web Host Account

Find the Domains section again in your web host administrative dashboard, then find the right field to add the new domain and its information. With this, your domain name will now point to your website. Remember to give the process 24 hours so that the new domain mapping can resolve fully.

Check the Domain and Test Its Mapping to Your Website

This is the easiest, and yet, most crucial bit. Type in your domain name in any browser address bar, and verify that you do reach your website homepage very time. If you don’t, it’s time to check if the CNAME data entered with the registrar and the domain name given to the web host have both been entered accurately.

Domain Mapping for Multisites or Multiple Domains

Like we discussed before, you might have more than one domain name, or perhaps you’ve gone the multisite network route with WordPress. Either way, your domain mapping will be done slightly differently.

The case I: Mapping Multiple Domains to One Website

For this kind of domain mapping, a plugin is the best way to go. It makes the process easier and the mappings are effortlessly manageable – well, at least as long as you’re familiar enough with your website setup to perform the basic domain mapping we described above. For instance, you’ll have to again locate the CNAME record information on your dashboard.

The plugin is called, quite literally, ‘Multiple Domain Mapping on a Single Site’, and it works great for use cases where you have multiple landing pages, or you want your different domains to point to different parts of your extensive website.

Case II: Domain Mapping for the WordPress Multisite Network

You’re in luck with this case, as WordPress versions newer than 4.5 natively support domain mapping for multisite networks – So, no plugin needed. However, just as a multisite network saves you the hassle of several WordPress installations just to run a bunch of related sites, the domain mapping for a multisite setup also needs you to be comfortable with something slightly more technical than locating the CNAME record – say, editing config.php.

You’ll also have to ensure that all of your domain names are already mapped to the DNS server, with SSL certificates in place for each of those domains so that you can log in securely to all sites on the network. Since multisite domain mapping is a feature of WordPress, you can find documentation and instructions at the official WordPress blog.

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