Using The .mymagic.page Subdomain

Every Magic Pages site gets a free address like yoursite.mymagic.page, and it works the moment your site is created. You pick it when you sign up for a free trial, there's nothing to configure, and it comes with a valid SSL certificate from the start.

It's a real address, not a preview link. You can publish to it, send newsletters from the site, and share it with readers.

Yes, you can launch on it and add a domain later

Launching on your .mymagic.page address costs you nothing later.

When you connect a custom domain, we set up a permanent redirect from the subdomain to your new address. Every link anyone shared in the meantime keeps working and lands on the right page. Ours does the same thing – magicpages.mymagic.page sends you to our main site.

So there's no reason to sit on an unpublished site waiting for a domain to be ready. Start where you are.

What happens to it once your custom domain is live

The subdomain starts redirecting to your custom domain with a 301, which is the permanent kind. It doesn't serve a second copy of your site, so you never have two versions of the same content competing in search results.

You don't have to set that up or ask for it. It's configured when your custom domain goes live, and removed again if you ever take the custom domain off, at which point the subdomain goes back to serving your site directly. Removing a domain is its own job:

How to remove a custom domain from your site

Take the domain off your site in the Customer Portal before you change its DNS. The other way round locks you out of your Ghost admin.

Magic PagesJannis Fedoruk-Betschki

What it means for search

A 301 is what search engines expect when a site moves, and it's the reason moving off the subdomain is safe. The rankings a page earned on your .mymagic.page address carry over to the same page on your domain.

Expect some movement while crawlers work through the change. That's reindexing, not a penalty, and it settles.

Changing your subdomain

You can change it, but not from the customer portal. Email us the name you'd like and we'll do it from our side.

The name has to be available and has to fit the format: 3 to 63 characters, lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only, and it can't start or end with a hyphen. Some names are reserved, and we'll tell you if the one you want is taken or blocked so you can pick another.

When we make the change:

• your site stays online throughout, and the whole thing takes about a minute
• we set up a 301 redirect from your old .mymagic.page address, so old links keep working
• your Ghost site's URL is updated for you, so nothing in the admin area needs touching
• if you have a custom domain, it's unaffected
• your old subdomain stays yours. It isn't released for someone else to claim

Anywhere you've pasted the old address by hand needs updating yourself, so think of your social profiles, your email signature and any integration you've pointed at the site. And search results can move around for a while afterwards, the same as any address change.

If you haven't set up a custom domain yet

You don't need one. A site on .mymagic.page is fully functional, and plenty of people run one for months before buying a domain.

When you do want your own, the setup is a couple of DNS records:

Setting up Your Custom Domain on Magic Pages

Learn how to easily set up a custom domain for your Ghost CMS on Magic Pages. Follow our clear, step-by-step guide to update DNS settings and enhance email deliverability.

Magic PagesJannis Fedoruk-Betschki