Custom domains
Your own domain on your photography gallery
A photography website looks more like a business at yourname.com than at a shared address. There are two ways to get there with Lenzl, and they cost very different amounts of your time.
Buy through Lenzl
Zero DNS work
Lenzl is the registrar and the host, so it holds the domain's zone directly and writes every record itself the moment registration completes. No separate DNS dashboard for you to open — ever.
Bring your own
A few records, at your registrar
Already own a domain, or want to buy it somewhere else? Keep it there. Add the records where you registered it, and Lenzl detects it — this page shows exactly what those look like.
Buying a domain through Lenzl
Searching is free and checks live availability — nothing is held or reserved until you confirm registration inside your account.
Step 1
Search
Check a name from the homepage or inside your account. Availability is live and nothing is reserved by looking.
Step 2
Claim it
Create a free account (or sign in) and confirm registration. Most endings — .co.uk, .uk, .org, .com and more — are included with a paid plan; on Free you pay Lenzl's cost and it's refunded if you upgrade.
Step 3
We wire it up
Lenzl holds the zone and writes every record itself. There is no registrar dashboard for you to open.
Step 4
Live, with a certificate
Your gallery serves on your domain over HTTPS. Nothing further on your side.
Connecting a domain you already own
Three steps, and the middle one is the only one that leaves Lenzl — the record(s) go in at whichever registrar or DNS provider your domain already uses.
1. Already own it
Bought a domain elsewhere — Namecheap, GoDaddy, 123-Reg, wherever? Add it from Gallery → Domain in your account.
2. Add the record(s)
We give you the exact record for your domain — one for the www version, more if you also want the bare domain to work (below). You add them where you registered the domain.
3. We check for it
Once it's saved at your registrar, we detect it automatically. DNS changes can take a little while to spread; there's nothing else to trigger.
Example — what yourname.com would need
| For | Type | Name | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| www — recommended | CNAME | www | origin.lenzl.com |
| bare domain — optional | URL_REDIRECT | @ | https://www.yourname.com |
| ownership — bare domain only | TXT | yourname.com | lenzl-verification=<generated for you> |
Point www — that's one record and it's the reliable path today. If you also want the bare domain (yourname.com without www) to work, that takes the other two records as well: an apex record can't carry the usual CNAME, so Lenzl proves ownership with a TXT record instead. The TXT value is generated once you start connecting a domain in your account, not a fixed string — never copy the placeholder above literally. Every domain gets its own exact values inside your account; this example is illustrative only.
If a record isn't right
Lenzl checks a connected domain end to end — the DNS record itself, that you actually own the domain, that a certificate has been issued, and that traffic reaching it lands on your gallery rather than somewhere else. When one of those isn't right yet, your account names which one — a missing record, one pointing at the wrong place, a certificate still being issued, or a domain that resolves but doesn't reach Lenzl — instead of a flat “not working”. Fix the thing it names and it clears on its own the next time it checks.