Preparing Your Domain for CorePanel

This guide takes you from nothing to a working panel you can open in your browser at an address like https://panel.example.com. No prior experience with domains, DNS, or name servers is assumed — every term is explained in plain language as it comes up.

By the end you will have:

1. Registered a domain name.
2. Created two name servers for it.
3. Delegated the domain to your CorePanel server.
4. Created the panel domain.
5. Confirmed the panel loads over a secure connection.

The big picture

Before the steps, here is what actually happens when someone opens your panel. It helps to have this picture in mind — the steps below are just filling in the pieces of it.

• A domain (like example.com) is a friendly name. Computers don’t use names — they use numeric IP addresses like 203.0.113.45. Your server has one of these.
• Name servers are the internet’s phone book. When a browser wants example.com, it asks that domain’s name servers, “what’s the address?” and they answer with your server’s IP.
• Delegation is simply telling the world which phone book to use for your domain. When you delegate the domain to CorePanel, your own server becomes the phone book — it answers every DNS question about the domain itself.

That’s the whole idea. Now let’s build it.

Just need the panel and nothing else?

If your only goal is to reach the control panel — and you’re not (yet) hosting websites or email for this domain on CorePanel — you can skip the name-server steps entirely and add a single A record instead. Jump to The shortcut: one A record. The full route below is for when CorePanel will manage everything for the domain.

Step 1 — Register the domain

A domain is rented, not bought outright — you register it for a year (or more) through a registrar. Popular ones include Namecheap, Porkbun, Cloudflare Registrar, GoDaddy, and many hosting companies. Any of them works; the screens below are a generic example, but every registrar has the same ideas under slightly different names.

Search for the name you want. If it’s available, add it to your cart and check out.

Pick a name you’ll keep

Changing domains later means redoing this whole guide, so choose a name you’re happy with. A short .com is the safe default. The exact price varies by registrar and extension.

You’ll also want your server’s public IP address handy for the next step. If you’ve already run the CorePanel setup wizard, it printed the IP; otherwise your server provider shows it in their dashboard. In this guide we’ll use 203.0.113.45 as the example.

Step 2 — Create your name servers

To make CorePanel the phone book for your domain, you first give your two name servers a name and an address. By convention they’re called ns1 and ns2 on your own domain — so ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com.

The address is the crucial part: each name server points at your server’s own public IP address — the CorePanel machine. That’s what makes your server the one that answers DNS for the domain. Both name servers point at that same server IP.

In your registrar’s control panel, find the section for registering name servers. Registrars label this differently — look for Register nameservers, Personal nameservers, Private nameservers, Host records, or Glue records — they all mean the same thing.

Enter both, and point each one at your CorePanel server’s public IP:

Name server	Points to
ns1.example.com	your server’s public IP
ns2.example.com	your server’s public IP

Use your server’s real IP

Both name servers must point at your CorePanel server’s public IP — the address your server provider assigned to the machine (the setup wizard also prints it). Don’t copy any address from the screenshots above; they use a placeholder on purpose. If your server has more than one public IP, pointing both name servers at the same one is perfectly fine.

Save. You’ve now created the name servers, but the domain isn’t using them yet — that’s the next step.

Why “glue”?

There’s a small chicken-and-egg problem: to find ns1.example.com, the internet needs to know where example.com’s name servers are — but ns1 is one of them. The registrar solves this by publishing the IP directly at the top-level (.com) level. That published IP is called a glue record. You don’t have to manage it — creating the name server here is what creates the glue.

Step 3 — Delegate the domain to CorePanel

Now tell the domain to actually use those name servers. In your registrar, open the domain’s Nameservers setting, switch from the registrar’s defaults to Custom nameservers, and enter the two names you just created.

Save. This is the delegation: from now on, the world asks your server for anything about example.com.

Give it time to spread

This change isn’t instant. Name-server updates take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to spread across the internet — this waiting period is called propagation. It’s normal. You can keep going with the next steps while it settles.

Step 4 — Create the panel domain

The panel domain is the address you’ll type to open CorePanel — for example panel.example.com. You set it on the server with the one-time setup wizard:

corepanel system init

When it asks for the panel domain, enter panel.example.com. CorePanel takes care of the DNS for you: because your server is now the phone book for example.com, it automatically publishes the record that points panel.example.com at itself, and it answers as ns1/ns2 for the domain. There are no DNS records to add by hand.

The wizard is covered in full — including how it handles SSL and what each prompt means — in Initial Server Setup.

You can reach the panel before DNS is ready

While delegation is still propagating, you don’t have to wait around. Open the panel directly by its IP at https://<server-ip> (your browser will warn about a self-signed certificate — that’s expected). Once DNS resolves, use the real, trusted https://panel.example.com; the IP endpoint stays up as a fallback. See Accessing the panel by IP.

Step 5 — First sign-in and the setup assistant

Once propagation finishes, open your panel domain in a browser (or reach it by IP right away — see the tip in Step 4):

https://panel.example.com

Sign in with the user coreadmin and the password from the setup wizard.

The initial configuration assistant

The first time you sign in, CorePanel greets you with the Initial configuration assistant — a short, four-step wizard that confirms who runs the server and, most importantly, the name servers it will publish for every domain it hosts.

Walk through the four steps:

1. Company — your name and email, used for notifications and alerts.
2. Server basics — the server’s host name and its main public IP address.
3. Name servers — the key step. Enter the two name servers you created in Step 2 — ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com — each pointing at your server’s public IP. CorePanel pre-fills sensible defaults from the previous step; just confirm they’re right.
4. Review — check everything and click Finish.

These must match Steps 2 & 3

The name servers you enter here are the ones CorePanel publishes inside every domain’s DNS. They must be exactly the same names — ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com — that you registered and delegated at your registrar. If they don’t match, the delegation and the answers won’t line up and domains won’t resolve.

When you finish, the assistant closes and drops you on the dashboard. You should see a padlock in the address bar — the connection is secure and the certificate is trusted.

Confirm it’s all wired up

If you’d like to confirm the plumbing from the command line, two quick checks tell you everything:

# 1. Is the domain delegated to your name servers?
dig NS example.com +short
# Expected: ns1.example.com. and ns2.example.com.

# 2. Does the panel domain point at your server?
dig panel.example.com +short
# Expected: your server's public IP, e.g. 203.0.113.45

If both look right and the browser shows the padlock, you’re done — the domain is fully prepared and CorePanel is serving it.

The shortcut: one A record

Don’t need CorePanel to manage the whole domain — just want to reach the panel? Skip Steps 2 and 3. Leave the domain on your registrar’s default name servers and add a single record in their DNS settings:

Type	Name / Host	Value
A	panel	your server’s public IP

That creates panel.example.com → your server. Then do Step 4 (run corepanel system init with panel.example.com) and Step 5 to test. This is the fastest path when the panel is all you need; you can always delegate the full domain later.

If something’s not working

• The browser can’t find the site. DNS probably hasn’t propagated yet. Wait a bit longer and re-run the dig checks above. Propagation can take a few hours.
• dig NS example.com returns the registrar’s name servers, not yours. The delegation in Step 3 hasn’t taken effect yet (still propagating), or wasn’t saved. Re-open the registrar’s Nameservers screen and confirm the custom name servers are set.
• dig panel.example.com returns nothing. Make sure you ran corepanel system init with the correct panel domain, and that the domain is delegated to your server (the previous check).
• The padlock is missing / certificate warning on the panel domain. CorePanel issues the trusted certificate automatically once the domain resolves publicly and ports 80 and 443 are open. Give it a minute after DNS resolves, and confirm those ports are reachable. Details in Initial Server Setup → How SSL works.

See also

• Initial Server Setup — the corepanel system init wizard, SSL, and reaching the panel before DNS resolves.
• Getting Started — install CorePanel and learn the core concepts.
• SSL/TLS Certificates — how CorePanel obtains and renews certificates.