How Use a Custom Domain Handle on The Bluesky App

On the Bluesky app, you can use a domain (yourdomainname.com) as a custom handle if you own a domain name and have access to the server that handles the DNS for it. Setting this up is a relatively easy process but it SEEMS difficult thanks to the terminology and the multiple locations where DNS could be managed.

There are three places where DNS is usually located:

• The company where you registered the domain. That company is your “registrar”, and it could be GoDaddy, NameCheap, NameSilo, Register.com, or another company specializing in registering domain names. Sometimes this company be your hosting company
• The hosting company where your website is located (SiteGround, HostGator, Bluehost, DreamHost, WP Engine, etc.)
• A CDN service like Cloudflare (Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Akamai CDN, Google Cloud CDN, Microsoft Azure CDN, etc.) – I use Cloudflare, so you’ll see this in the video linked to below.

The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out where your DNS is managed and how to access those DNS settings. Once you have that figured out, follow the steps below. You can do a search here on ICANN to figure out who your provider is:

https://lookup.icann.org/en

ICANN = The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit organization that manages the internet’s domain names

Open two browser windows so you can go back and forth between your Bluesky settings and DNS settings.

Start in the Bluesky app

In the Bluesky app settings:

• Go to your Profile
• Go to Account Settings
• Select “Handle”
• Click the “I have my own domain” button

• Enter the domain you want to use in the Domain field
• Copy the TXT record information provided by Bluesky (I use this method in the associated video to verify ownership of my domain, but you could also use the create and upload a file to your server method if you know how to do that)

• Leave this open in its own tab so you can come back and click the “Verify DNS Record” button after adding the TXT record over at your DNS provider

Next at your DNS provider

Log into your DNS provider in the other tab:

1. Go to your DNS settings (where this is will vary from one DNS provider to another, but the records will all look the same so if you see records like this you’re probably in the right place:

1. Add the TXT record copied from Bluesky, set the TTL (Time to Live) to the lowest time possible – in the video I use 1 minute

Back to the Bluesky tab

• After the TXT record has been added and a few minutes have passed to allow the DNS change to process through, go back to BlueSky and click the verify domain button

Important FYI’s

• DNS doesn’t always immediately update whenever you make a change (like adding a new TXT record), so you might have to wait anywhere from a few minutes up to 48 hours before the verification on the Bluesky side will be successful. Adding a TXT record is a relatively simple thing, so it usually updates fast.
• The TXT record you’re adding doesn’t really do anything. It just puts some information in your DNS that Bluesky can find to verify that you are able to access and edit the DNS for the domain.
• Other types of records you’ll see while in your DNS account do actually do things so don’t mess with any of those (unless you know what you’re doing).

If you’re more of a learn-by-watching person, check out a short video tutorial here:

Contact me any time through this site or over on Bluesky if you need help figuring this out.