New publishing settings/process is confusing

Publishing help Project settings
1

Is anybody else running into confusion over getting a site published with the new User Interface in Webflow’s Publishing?

In the setting’s it states, ‘Visit the admin console of your domain registrar (the website you bought your domain from) and create the DNS Records shown below. Note that it may take up to a few hours for the DNS changes to propagate.’ - and it lists the standard 2 A records, the CNAME record and a new TXT verification record.

But on this page explaining the new approach it says to remove any A records Set the root domain as the default domain on SSL hosting - Webflow University Documentation

To configure your DNS records to use the root domain as the default:

  1. Open the DNS settings for your custom domain (in your domain registrar or DNS host’s dashboard)
  2. Remove any A records set on your root domain (i.e., A records with the hostname @ or yourdomain.com) if applicable
  3. Create a CNAME or ANAME record with the hostname @ and the value proxy-ssl.webflow.com
  4. Create a CNAME record with the hostname www and the value proxy-ssl.webflow.com

I am quite confused. Am I supposed to use A records now or not?

Grant

Here is my site Read-Only: LINK
(how to share your site Read-Only link)

2

Yes you need your two A records, which Webflow indicates.
However you must remove any other A records that might already exist there.

3

Thanks Michael, that’s what I understand the situation to be as well.

But why does Webflow say on the page I linked to above, ’ 1. Remove any A records set on your root domain (i.e., A records with the hostname @ or yourdomain.com) if applicable’ - and at the same time in the actual Publishing settings tell us to add A records with ‘@’. See below. Hence my confusion.

publishing-settings-records
publishing-settings-records1164×841 130 KB

You can see I am having issues with this new Domain Verification thing as well New publishing settings not working - Publishing help / Project settings - Forum | Webflow

Grant

4

Yep, the docs look broken. You should let support know.

I saw that. IMO, TXT records do take longer to propagate, not sure why. I’d give it 12 to 24h, as long as you’re sure you’ve created them it’s just a waiting process.

I’ve also seen that for some DNS providers ( occasionally GoDaddy ), people here have to contact their support to get the TXT records to finish updating properly.

5

Yup. They’ve heard from me.

Did you receive any notice from Webflow hat things were changing as far as Publishing settings go? I didn’t know anything about it until I went to publish a new site yesterday. Bit annoyed about the whole thing.

6

Do you mean regarding the need for a TXT record?
No that was silently introduced earlier this year.

I expect it has to do with SSL certificate provisioning.

7

Ok. Would have been nice for Webflow to have notified folks.

8

Yes it sure would be, but Webflow doesn’t follow industry standard practices.

Major changes drop without warning, entire sub-systems are taken offline with no notice, and nothing in Webflow Status. Even when the API was rate limited to ~5 requests per minute recently, no one was given heads up to prepare.

The latest major UX redesign came no opt-in preview, and no ability to use the legacy UX if you can’t cope with the eyestrain on the smaller fonts…

By those measures the TXT record addition was a tiny thing. Inconvenient, but it was likely a necessity for some aspect of the hosting service provisioning.

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