As an administrator, you can map a URL to a site in Google Sites to create a short, easy-to-remember address for your public website. You can create up to 2,000 custom site addresses with your Google Workspace account.
Considerations when mapping a URL
- Users with trial accounts or accounts with a trial status cannot map a site to a URL.
- Users cannot map a site to a URL that's under a different domain name.
- Address mappings automatically supply domain-validated SSL certificates for secure connections. You can't use other certificates.
- People can only see the mapped URL if the site is shared with anyone outside of your organization. If the site is shared with specific people or only with your organization, everyone sees the original URL, such as sites.google.com/example.com/ yoursitename , instead of the mapped URL.
- A sub-domain can only be mapped to a primary domain. A sub-domain cannot be mapped to another sub-domain.
Step 1: Turn on site creation for users
Before you begin: Make sure Sites is turned on for your users. For details, go to Turn Sites on or off for users
.
To turn on site creation for Sites:
- Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.
If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.
- Go to Menu Apps > Google Workspace > Sites .
Requires having the Service Settings administrator privilege .
- Click New Sites Site creation and editing.
- Select Users can edit sitesand check the Allow users to create new sitesbox.
- Click Save.
- Next to New Sites, click the Up arrow to close the New Sites section.
- Select Users at your domain can create sitesand click Save.
Step 2: Add a custom URL
Requires having the Domain Settings administrator privilege
Before you begin: If you’re mapping a URL to a secondary domain, the owner of the site must use the secondary domain for their email address. If the owner uses a different domain, you need to create an account for the user on the secondary domain and transfer ownership of the site to the new account. The user on the secondary domain must then duplicate the site (to change the site path to the secondary domain) and publish the duplicated site.
- Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.
If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.
- Go to Menu Apps > Google Workspace > Sites .
Requires having the Service Settings administrator privilege .
- Click Custom URL.
- Click Add New Sites.
- Click Continue.
- Enter the current URL for the site. The URL will be sites.google.com/ domain / sitename .
- Click Continue.
- Select a verified domain.
Note: If you’re mapping from Sites, only the domain hosting the site is available. - Enter a custom URL for the siteclick Continue.
- Click Add Custom URL.
- (Optional) To update the CNAME record on your domain host’s website:
- Sign in to your domain host’s website.
- Go to the DNS management page.
- Find the CNAME settings and for the CNAME value or alias, enter your custom URL.
- For the CNAME destination, enter ghs.googlehosted.com.
- Save the changes.
Changes can take up to 24 hours but typically happen more quickly. Learn more
(Optional) Create a naked domain address
For details, go to Set up the naked domain address for your site .
Troubleshooting errors
Solution
- The CNAME record wasn’t updated on your domain host’s website. For details, go to step 9 in Add a custom URL (above on this page).
- Your DNS provider lacks proper support for Certificate Authority Authorization (CAA)
. If this is the case, you can take one or more of the following actions:
- Add a CAA record to your domain.
- Contact your DNS provider to fix the CAA support.
- Change to a DNS provider that provides proper CAA support.
- Reconfigure a CAA record if it was explicitly configured to prevent issuance by Let’s Encrypt.
This error could be due to:
- The fact that the site was created on the primary domain and shows the original domain when trying to add the custom URL.
If so:
- Make a copy of the site using the new domain. This action allows the owner to map the site using the secondary domain.
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