Confirm your domain

In short

• One TXT record on your domain proves the app is yours. With a paid plan, the app then gets the close watch: reachability every five minutes instead of once a day.
• You pick where your domain's DNS is managed. Where that provider has approved Vallit, you allow the record on its own page with one click. Everywhere else, you add it by hand in three steps.
• It needs an account and access to your domain's DNS settings.

Where in the app

Until the domain is confirmed, the app's page lists Confirm you own and the address under Needs you. Confirm now in that row opens the Connect your DNS panel in place.

DesktopPhone

Step by step

Steps 3, 4 and 5 are three ways to add the same record. Follow the one the panel offers you.

2456

2456

1. Open the panel

   On Home, while no incident is open, the panel is the Next card, titled Confirm you own and the address. On the app's page, click Confirm now in the Confirm you own row under Needs you. The Connect your DNS panel opens under the row, and the button now reads Close. Add the record in the Inbox opens the app's page with the panel already open.

2. Pick where your DNS is managed

   Vallit looks up your domain's DNS provider and selects its tile. The tile is marked One click where one click works, and Your DNS everywhere else. If no tile or the wrong one is selected, click the right one. For a provider not listed, click Somewhere else.

3. Approve the record at your provider

   If the selected tile says One click, the panel shows a card with a button that names your provider, such as Continue to GoDaddy. Click it, and the button reads Opening GoDaddy until your provider's page opens and asks you to allow one record. Approve it, and you are back on the app's page, where Vallit looks the record up.

4. Or add the record by hand

   Otherwise, the panel lists three lines for your provider. For a listed provider, a button such as Open Namecheap opens its DNS settings. On the one-click card, Add it by hand instead shows the same lines.

   Add a record of type TXT. Copy the name and Value from the table with the copy buttons beside them, and save. The name's label is your provider's own word for the field, listed below. For Somewhere else, the steps also give the whole name, for forms that want it.

   Pointing at a copy button shows what it copies, to its left. When you press it, the second sheet of its icon slides off the first. The button then turns green with a check, and the value you copied lights up green for a moment. If your browser does not let the page copy, a line under the table starts with Not copied. The text is selected for you: copy it with your keyboard.

   Provider	Where to add the record	The name field is called
   Cloudflare	Your domain → DNS → Records → Add record	Name
   GoDaddy	Your domain → DNS → Add new record. The TTL can stay.	Name
   IONOS	Your domain → DNS → Add record	Host name
   Vercel	Domains → your domain → add a record	Name
   Namecheap	Manage → Advanced DNS → Add new record, then save all changes	Host
   Netlify	Domains → your domain → Add new record	Name
   Strato	Domains → your domain → DNS settings → TXT records	Prefix
   Hetzner	The zone of your domain → Add record	Name
   Somewhere else	Wherever your domain is managed, its DNS records	Name, or the whole name

   Once the record is saved at your provider, go on to step 6.

5. Or let Vallit add it at Cloudflare

   With Cloudflare selected, open Or let Vallit add it with a Cloudflare token under the record. Create a token opens Cloudflare's token page with DNS Edit already ticked. Create the token for your domain's zone, Cloudflare's word for a domain, and copy it.

   Paste it into Cloudflare API token and click Add the record. Vallit adds the record and looks it up straight away. If the record needs a moment, the panel says Record added at Cloudflare. It usually shows up within a minute; checking again.

6. Look for the record

   Click Look for the record at the bottom of the panel. The button reads Looking while Vallit looks the record up, and if it is not there yet, the panel says why. While the one-click card shows, the button stays hidden. It appears once your provider sends you back with the record added.

   After steps 3 and 5, Vallit checks by itself, and once more a few seconds later if the record needs a moment.

7. See the result

   Once the record is found, the row and its panel leave Needs you, and the page shows Domain confirmed. once. The line under it says whether the close watch is on, or that a plan turns it on. In the Settings card, Domain now reads Confirmed by DNS record, with the date.

What happens behind the scenes

• The record is a TXT record named _vallit in front of your app's address, for example _vallit.myapp.com. Its value starts with vallit-verification=, followed by a code made for this app.
• For an app on a subdomain, the name keeps the subdomain. For shop.myapp.com, the provider form wants _vallit.shop.
• To confirm the domain, Vallit looks up that one name in public DNS and compares the value with the code.
• To select a tile, Vallit reads which name servers answer for your domain. It also asks that provider's public Domain Connect service, the open standard behind one click, whether it knows Vallit. Neither changes anything.
• Netlify's name servers are shared with other companies, so Vallit never selects Netlify for you. Pick its tile yourself.
• One click sends you to your provider with a signed request for the one record in Vallit's published template. Vallit never signs in to your provider, and the provider adds the record only after you approve it.
• The request lasts 15 minutes and belongs to your Vallit sign-in in that browser. Coming back confirms nothing by itself: Vallit looks the record up in public DNS, as Look for the record does.
• With a Cloudflare token, Vallit makes three calls: it checks the token, finds the zone and adds the one record. The record carries the comment Vallit domain verification.
• The token is used only for those three calls. It is not stored, not logged and never shown back.
• Once the domain is confirmed, it stays confirmed. Vallit does not look the record up again.

Confirming the domain changes these things for the app:

• Findings of the targeted checks show where they sit, what they let a person do and how to fix them, on every report of the app at once. Before, they show only their severity, category and title.
• The daily full check of an app on Free includes the targeted checks, such as the search for left-over backup files and open folders. On Watch and Care it ran them already.
• With a paid plan, reachability is checked every five minutes instead of once a day, and the response-time chart in the Guardian card fills in. The guardian has the full schedule.
• The app can show as Healthy on Home once a report with every check scores 85 or more. Until the next daily check has run the targeted checks, such a score shows as Partly checked. The report's line under the waiting checks then says Waiting: the domain is confirmed now, so the next check runs these.

If something goes wrong

When you copy the record

After your provider's page

If more than 15 minutes pass before you approve, or you sign in to Vallit again in between, you come back to Home instead of the app's page. Your provider may still have added the record, so open the app and click Look for the record.

When Vallit looks the record up

With a Cloudflare token

Related