How to change custom domain without downtime (app already on production)

Hi, I am planning for changing my app custom domain from (a).mydomain.com to (b).mydomain.com.

The problem is, as soon as I click Change app domain, and enter the new name, the whole live site went down.

Is there a way to prevent or mitigate this?

If prevention is not possible, do you guys know

  • How to limit the downtime?
  • how long would the minimum downtime be?
  • is there a way to show proper announcement page so users are guided?
  • anything else I may need to prepare before hand to ensure this happens as smoothly as possible?

My app is already on production with daily active users, so I really can’t afford to have the app down for too long without proper UI.

This is the first time I tried this process - so really hope for some advices and guidance from more experienced folks here. Thank you so much!

Hi @kelsienguyen

Yeah, I’m afraid there isn’t a workaround for this. You’ll have to wait for the DNS to propagate. It could take a few hours up to 48 hours.

From what I know, there isn’t something you could do (in Bubble) to increase the speed of the DNS propagation. Just make sure you were able to add the correct values in your DNS settings.

Typically, DNS propagation can take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours, depending on various factors including the settings of the DNS servers and how often they are set to update their records.

While you haven’t changed your custom domain yet, you could either redirect users to a new page that announces that there will be down time or your app won’t be available from date x to date y

or you could also add a reusable element across all your pages announcing the downtime.

Just make sure you add the values correctly to prevent dragging the downtime even longer :slight_smile:

If you really want to let your users still see a functioning website while you’re changing your domains, I suggest you connect your old domain to a new simple website showing that the website is undergoing a maintenance or something.

This would certainly add extra steps/hassle to you but worth it if you want your users to still see a functioning website. (your old domain’s DNS might still be propagating during the transfer though so it could beat the purpose :laughing: but could be a great safeguard in case the new domain would take longer) You could check out simple tools like carrd or something for this. LMK if you need help for this. I have a pro carrd account - could add your maintenance site there

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Thank you so much for such a detailed response!