Adding your records at Squarespace Domains

Squarespace Domains, which is where domains bought from Google Domains now live, takes every Issue Mint record except the root of the domain. Records are added under DNS settings, in the custom records section, and what each record does reads the same whichever provider you are working in.

Adding these is not a prerequisite for anything. Your newsletter sends and its website is already published on the issuemint.com address, and the records move it rather than switch it on.

Open DNS settings for the domain

Sign in to Squarespace, open Domains, choose the domain, then open its DNS settings. Below the preset records that Squarespace manages itself sits a custom records section, which is where everything on this page goes.

The columns are Host, Type, Priority, TTL and Data, inherited from Google Domains and familiar if that is where the domain came from. Host is what other providers call Name, and Data is what they call Value or Target.

Add the www and tracking records

Both are CNAME records. Type the bare label in Host, because Squarespace appends your domain, and paste the destination into Data.

The go record is what serves your click tracking links from your own domain rather than ours. If Squarespace already has a preset record on www, that preset is the thing standing in the way, and it has to go before the new record can answer.

Add the certificate and DMARC records

The three certificate records are CNAMEs on _acme-challenge hosts. Their values carry an identifier that exists only inside your account, so copy each one from the domain tab rather than typing it, and they keep HTTPS renewing on each hostname afterwards.

DMARC is only ever a suggestion here. A _dmarc record you already have, whatever its policy, is left alone.

Add the sending records when they appear

Five more records arrive in the domain tab shortly after the domain is added, once Amazon has minted your DKIM tokens. They are what let your issues come from your own address instead of ours.

The MX record has its own Priority column on this screen, so the number goes there rather than into Data. Use the copy button for each DKIM value: the host is the token followed by ._domainkey, and nothing more, because Squarespace completes it.

Check for records left over from Google Domains

Two records on the same host is the failure that looks most like nothing happening at all, and a domain that has changed hands twice is where it turns up.

Read down the custom records for an old www entry, an old _dmarc, or a send record from a previous email provider, and delete rather than edit around them. A resolver answering with either of two records is exactly what a record that will not verify describes, and it is worth ruling out before anything else.

The root of the domain

Squarespace Domains has no ALIAS or ANAME record type, so there is no supported way to put the root of a domain on a hostname. Expect that row either to be refused or to save and never resolve.

Issue Mint notices when the root is the only thing outstanding and offers www.yourdomain.com as your address instead. It is one click, it is reversible, and the root records stay in the table being checked, so moving DNS to a provider that supports it later means switching back rather than starting again.