2 months ago
Hello, I have read various related threads which allude to GoDaddy not really being viable for direct CNAME management, with the answer being to just use CloudFlare. We're looking into this but in the meantime have some issues to ask about.
Note: I am FINE not having the root example.com url pointing to railway, we have setup a 301 > www.example.com where we will host the site. So I dont need to solve for '@' records.
I've reviewed https://docs.railway.com/guides/public-networking and other help threads which seem to be either people needing flattening, or giving up to use CloudFlare 
.
Thread alluding to a "known GoDaddy issue": https://station.railway.com/questions/cannot-connect-custom-go-daddy-domain-to-10152a30 (seen in a few other threads but don't see the actual issue spelled out anywhere.
---
First we setup our various servers to e.g. dev.example.com, etc., using the railway values for our CNAMEs in GoDaddy
DNS completely propagated as confirmed by https://dnschecker.org/
In railway Settings we just see "Validating domain ownership" perpetually
Question 1 >
The networking doc does not mention anything about domain validation or a process to provide this. Why would I be seeing this error?
The only guess we had was maybe we needed to setup the www.example.com CNAME to "validate" the domain, so we added this one.
Good news is the www custom domain gets past the 'validating', but is instead stuck at "Issuing TLS certificate" ... well over 24h at this point
Question 2 >
Are we missing some other step in our process (add custom domain > get cname > update godaddy > propagate > pray)
Is GoDaddy just flat-out not supported?
From the public networking doc CNAMEs should be all that's needed outside of the root domain flattening which we don't need to handle.
I'm hoping that A) there's a more clear answer for future folks trying to get GoDaddy working by itself B) an update on what might be missing for the basic use case we're trying to get working (if possible)
5 Replies
2 months ago
Hey there! We've found the following might help you get unblocked faster:
If you find the answer from one of these, please let us know by solving the thread!
2 months ago
Hey, every domain registrar is technically supported, as long as you are not using an apex domain. I would try to remove the CNAME record and removing the domain from Railway and set it up again in Railway. Configuring your domain to be managed by Cloudflare is also completely free so you may also want to try this approach out, with the benefit of it also supporting apex domains as they have CNAME flattening, follow Cloudflare's full set up guide if you wish to try it out.
2 months ago
Yes, I am aware that CF is free and works well. As mentioned we are working towards probably that as long term fix, but in the short term trying to get the domains working with what we have in place now (GoDaddy).
Again we are not trying to use the apex, just www., dev. etc.
What's the justification behind removing the cname from godaddy, custom domain from railway, and re-setting up? I've seen this a few times and seems equivalent to factory or hard resets of a device ... I'd like to understand more about what's causing the issue
As you noted, every registrar is technically supported, but I'm not getting any feedback or errors from railway (or these forum posts) to point in the direction of what's actually going on.
I can attempt to recreate all these, but this isn't quick as it involves another admin who had the GoDaddy access -- each time you recreate a custom domain you get a new random xxxxx.up.railway.app so I need to make changes on both sides.
2 months ago
If godaddy doesnt support cname your only option is using cloudflare. Cloudflare also has a very slow TTL, which will make it much faster and makes it worth just moving it to cf rather than waiting on godaddy
2 months ago
To be clear -- I think the question of cloudflare is handled pretty thoroughly in the docs and elsewhere in the forums, not the solution I'm asking about here.
GoDaddy of course supports CNAMEs - they propagate just fine and should be picked up by railway based on the doc.
What's missing is a good understanding of
A) what's stopping railway from validating + issuing certs once the cnames are setup correctly (am I missing steps / understanding?)
B) for folks that want to use GoDaddy w/o managing another vendor, this should be possible but I see a lot of "trouble" searching these forums
