Chengshuo Dai

I recently went through the full process of binding my own domain to this personal website. I am writing down the notes while the details are still fresh, because this is exactly the kind of setup that feels simple after it works, but confusing when one DNS record is wrong.

1. Background

The original pain point was simple: my personal website had already been deployed on Vercel in the United States, but after returning to China, the default xxx.vercel.app address could not be opened reliably.

The key lesson: this was not a code problem and not a deployment problem. The website itself was working. The issue was access to the default vercel.app subdomain, which can be affected by DNS pollution and international network restrictions from inside mainland China.

So the practical solution was to bind my own domain name to the Vercel project.

2. Full Reproducible Setup

2.1 Prerequisites

I already had:

A Vercel project: https://vercel.com/chengshuo-dai/personal-website
A purchased domain: lucasdai.cn
DNS management through Tencent Cloud DNSPod

In my case, the site is hosted outside mainland China, so I did not go through an ICP filing for this setup. This is a personal deployment note rather than legal advice; domain and hosting compliance rules should always be checked against the current platform and local requirements.

2.2 Add the Custom Domain in Vercel

Inside Vercel:

Open the project.
Go to Settings -> Domains.
Enter the domain: lucasdai.cn.
Optionally enable Redirect apex to www.
Click Add Domain.

The redirect option means the root domain lucasdai.cn can automatically redirect to www.lucasdai.cn. This is useful because it gives the site one canonical address instead of treating the root domain and the www subdomain as two separate versions of the same website.

2.3 Configure DNS Records in Tencent Cloud DNSPod

After adding the domain, Vercel shows the DNS records it expects. In my setup, I added two records in DNSPod:

Record Type	Host Record	Record Value	TTL	Purpose
A	`@`	`216.198.79.1`	`600`	Points the apex domain `lucasdai.cn` to Vercel
CNAME	`www`	`cname.vercel-dns.com`	`600`	Points `www.lucasdai.cn` to Vercel

Important note: the Vercel UI should be treated as the source of truth for the exact DNS value. The IP I used was 216.198.79.1, but if Vercel shows a different value in the future, use the value displayed by Vercel.

2.4 Verify the Setup

After saving the DNS records:

Go back to the Vercel Domains page.
Click Refresh.
Wait for the status to move from Invalid Configuration to Valid Configuration.
Wait for the SSL status to move from Generating SSL Certificate to Issued.
Open both:
- https://lucasdai.cn/
- https://www.lucasdai.cn/

When the browser can open the site and the address bar shows the lock icon, the domain and HTTPS setup are working.

3. Concepts I Finally Understood

3.1 308 Permanent Redirect

A 308 Permanent Redirect tells browsers and search engines that a URL has permanently moved to another URL.

In my case, after enabling the apex-to-www redirect, visiting lucasdai.cn redirects to www.lucasdai.cn. This avoids splitting the same site across two addresses and helps search engines understand the canonical version.

The key point is that this is not an error. It is expected behavior when one domain is configured to be the canonical entry point.

3.2 SSL Certificate

An SSL/TLS certificate enables HTTPS. It encrypts traffic, helps prevent tampering, and proves that the site is being served for the domain owner.

In this setup, Vercel automatically requested, deployed, and renews the certificate. I did not need to manually download or upload any certificate file.

Seeing Generating SSL Certificate in Vercel is normal. After a few minutes, it should become Issued.

3.3 TTL 600

TTL means Time To Live. It controls how long DNS results can stay cached by DNS resolvers.

My DNS records used 600, which means 600 seconds, or 10 minutes. After changing a DNS record, some networks may continue using the old result until the cache expires.

For this setup, 600 is a normal value. I did not need to change it.

3.4 Apex Domain vs. WWW Subdomain

The apex domain is:

lucasdai.cn

The www subdomain is:

www.lucasdai.cn

The apex domain is shorter and works well for a personal brand. The www version is a traditional web convention and is still widely used.

The practical recommendation is to choose one as the canonical domain and redirect the other one to it. There is no need to keep both as independent entry points for the same site.

3.5 Domain, Server, and Website

The relationship finally became clear to me:

Concept	Analogy	Notes
Domain	Street address	A globally unique name that points users to a destination
Server	House	One server can host many websites
Website	Room inside the house	One website can be reached through multiple domains
DNS record	Road from address to house	An A or CNAME record tells DNS where a host should point

A website does not require one dedicated domain. One domain can support many subdomains:

lucasdai.cn for the main site
blog.lucasdai.cn for a blog
lab.lucasdai.cn for experiments

These do not require buying new domains.

A domain also does not have to point to only one server. Different subdomains can point to different services:

The main site can point to Vercel.
An API service can point to a separate cloud server.
A demo project can point to another deployment platform.

This is why DNS is such a powerful layer. It separates the human-readable address from the actual infrastructure behind it.

4. Takeaway

The most important lesson from this setup was that deployment success and accessibility are not always the same thing.

Vercel had already deployed the website correctly. The real issue was that the default Vercel subdomain was not reliably accessible from my network environment. Binding a custom domain gave me a stable public entry point and also made the website feel more professional.

The final working setup was:

Domain purchased from Tencent Cloud: lucasdai.cn
DNS managed in DNSPod
Website deployed on Vercel
Apex domain pointing to Vercel through an A record
www pointing to Vercel through a CNAME record
HTTPS certificate automatically managed by Vercel

This is now my reusable checklist for future personal projects.