You paid for yourname.com, you typed it into a browser, and you got an ad-covered placeholder page belonging to the company you bought it from. Nothing is broken. A domain name is an address, not a house — buying it reserves the name, and it does not create a website or store any files. To make your domain open your site, you point it at a host that holds your files, which on sofast means adding the domain in your dashboard and copying two records into your registrar's DNS panel.
What you actually bought
A domain name is a rental on a name in the global directory of the internet. You pay a registrar — the company you bought it from — to keep that name reserved under your control, usually a year at a time.
That is all it is. It does not come with storage, files, a website, or a place to put one. This surprises a lot of people, and reasonably so: registrars sell domains with pictures of finished websites next to the buy button.
A domain is a name pointing at an address. Somebody still has to build what sits at that address.
Why your domain shows a parking page
Right now, your domain points at your registrar's own servers, which show a placeholder. That is the default, not a problem. Your job is to change where the name points.
The system that handles this is DNS — Domain Name System — the internet's directory. When someone types yourname.com, their browser asks DNS where that name lives, and DNS answers with the address of a server. Change the DNS answer, and you change what loads.
The three things you need to connect
The domain itself, at your registrar. You have this.
Somewhere your files live. A host. If you have not published your site yet, start there — publish your site first. Your site will be live on a free subdomain, and your custom domain becomes a second address pointing at the same files.
Access to your registrar's DNS settings. Usually under a menu called DNS, Nameservers, or Advanced DNS. You are looking for a table of records.
How to point your domain at your site
Four steps. The only slightly fiddly part is finding the DNS panel, which every registrar hides somewhere different.
Add the domain in your sofast dashboard. Open your site, go to Domains, and enter yourname.com. sofast shows you the exact records to create — do not close this screen.
Open your registrar's DNS panel. Log in where you bought the domain and find the DNS records section. You will see a table with columns like Type, Name and Value.
Add the records sofast showed you. Usually two: one for yourname.com and one for www.yourname.com. Copy the values exactly, including any trailing dot. If a record with the same name already exists — often one pointing at the parking page — replace it rather than adding a second one.
Save, then wait. sofast checks for the records and issues an SSL certificate automatically once it sees them. You do not have to buy or install a certificate yourself.
How long it takes to work
Usually minutes. Sometimes hours.
DNS answers are cached — copied and held for a while — by servers all over the world, so a change does not reach everyone at the same moment. That caching window is set by a value called TTL, and it commonly runs from a few minutes to 48 hours.
Two things worth knowing while you wait. Your site may load for a colleague and not for you, or on your phone and not on your laptop, and that is normal mid-propagation. And your browser caches aggressively — if you have already visited the parking page, try the domain in a private window before concluding it failed.
Common questions
The six answers below cover cost, timing, subdomains, email, moving a domain, and whether you can undo the change.
No. Your site works on a free subdomain from the moment you publish it, and that address is permanent, not a temporary preview. A custom domain is about how it looks to other people. Most freelancers publish first and add a domain when a client or an employer is about to see it.
Yes, as long as it is still registered to you and you can log into the registrar. Check the expiry date while you are in there. An expired domain stops resolving, and recovering one after it lapses can get expensive.
The domain is the name. Hosting is where the files live. You can buy them from the same company or from different ones, and keeping them separate is common and perfectly fine — it also makes it easier to change either one later.
No. Your yourname.sofast.host address keeps working alongside your custom domain, so anything you shared earlier stays valid.
Only if you want email at your domain. Email uses separate DNS records — MX records — and adding site records does not affect them. If you already have email on this domain, leave those records alone.
Yes. DNS records are editable at any time. Point the domain somewhere else, or remove the records and go back to your subdomain. Nothing is permanent, and nothing about your files changes when you do.
Get your site online first — the domain takes two minutes once it is.