How your community's web address works

The hosted address

When you create a Locker, it gets an address in the form name.lockers.social. Share it anywhere you would share a website address. On Free and Basic this is the community's address, and it stays that way for as long as the community exists.

Adding a domain you own

A custom domain is a Pro feature. Each community uses one domain, and only the owner can add, replace, or remove it. The Domain card is under Admin, then Settings, then Domains, and it takes you through adding the hostname, putting the records Lockers shows into your DNS, and selecting Verify. The article Connect a custom domain to your Locker covers that in full, including what to check when verification does not pass.

A subdomain such as community.example.com connects with one CNAME record. An apex domain such as example.com takes A records plus a CNAME for www, so it routes the matching www address as well.

What members see once it verifies

From then on the custom domain is the address in the browser bar. Someone who opens name.lockers.social is forwarded to the same page on the custom domain, so a link to one course opens that course at the new address.

That forwarding is why the links you shared before you connected the domain still reach the right place. Old bookmarks work. New ones will show the custom domain, and both get people into the same community.

The first time a member arrives after you connect the domain, they sign in again. Selecting Sign in takes them to lockers.social and brings them back to the page they started on, with a Signing you in message on screen while they return. A member who is already signed in to lockers.social in that browser sees two quick redirects and no form at all.

If the custom domain stops routing

Routing ends in one of three situations: you remove the domain, you replace it with a different one, or Pro access ends and the custom-domain grace period runs out fourteen days later. After that, anyone who opens the custom address is sent back to the hosted address, and members sign in again there. Your content and your members are untouched, and the Domain card offers Upgrade to Pro to restore routing if you want the domain back.

What a custom domain does not change

A custom domain changes the web address only. Community notification email still sends from notify@lockers.social, and connecting a domain does not create a sending address on your own domain. You can still pick which address receives replies to those notifications, which the article Set where community email replies go explains.