Vercel provides a nice user interface to manage everything about a web application and makes it very easy to replace the automatically assigned domain with a custom one.
Here are all the steps required to configure a Namecheap domain in Vercel:
Vercel
- Select your project
On the main dashboard, select the project to which you want to assign the custom domain. Then, go to Settings and select the Domains menu item.
- Enter your domain
From the Domains page, enter the domain and press Add. Once you have added a valid domain, you will see it displayed with an error indicating Invalid Configuration. This means that we need to configure the domain so that it points to Vercel.
- Copy Vercel nameservers
Underneath the Invalid Configuration error, you will also see a Nameservers tab. If you click on it, you will see the Vercel nameservers that we will need to add to our domain in Namecheap.
Namecheap
- Select your domain
Now that we have added our domain in Vercel, we just need to add the nameservers in Namecheap to complete the configuration. Once you are logged into your Namecheap account, go to Domain List in the sidebar, select the domain you want to configure, and click Manage.
- Add Vercel nameservers
On the Details page, select the Domain tab and scroll down to Nameservers. Then, select Custom DNS in the dropdown menu and add the Vercel nameservers.
- Wait for the changes to propagate
After adding the nameservers, you will need to wait for the changes to propagate. This can take up to 48 hours, but usually takes less than 10 minutes. Once the changes are propagated, the Invalid Configuration error will disappear and the domain will be ready for use.