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A site’s Domains tab holds the addresses it answers on, the certificates for them, and the paths that have moved.

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DNS

The most common reason a new site does not answer is that nothing ever pointed at it. The tab spells out the exact A record to add for each of the site’s names, with the server’s address, so there is nothing to work out. Add them at whoever holds the domain. Until they resolve to this server, two things are true: the site will not answer, and Let’s Encrypt cannot verify it, so a certificate request will fail.

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Aliases

Names the site also answers on, beyond its primary domain — www.example.com beside example.com, or a second brand on the same application. Each alias needs its own DNS record, and a certificate has to cover it before it is served over HTTPS. Adding an alias does not extend an existing certificate; request a new one after adding it.

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Redirects

Paths on this site that send people somewhere else. Answered by nginx before the application sees the request, so a page that has moved costs nothing to serve — no PHP process, no framework boot. From is a path on this site. To is another path here, or a full address anywhere. Kind is the status code:
  • 301 — moved for good.
  • 302 — moved for now.
  • 307 and 308 keep the method and the body, which matters for anything that was being posted to. A 301 on a POST endpoint turns it into a GET and loses the body.
Everything under this path too matches the prefix rather than the exact path. All of it lands on the same address — the rest of the path is not carried over, so /old/a and /old/b both end up at wherever you sent /old. Redirects are written into the site’s nginx configuration and are live as soon as it reloads.