Get Root Domain SSL to Work with G Suite, Google Sites, and Google Domains

dnsgoogle-sitesgoogle-workspacehttpsssl

I have Google's G Suite newly hooked up to a domain I'll call example.com

I have a Google Sites (a new-Google-Sites site) at an address like this:
https://sites.google.com/example.com/example

I have the domain example.com held at Google Domains

I followed the directions here:

And set up custom url via the G Suite Admin panel such that
https://www.example.com –> https://sites.google.com/example.com/example

It works through a CNAME record as described in the answer above:

www CNAME ghs.googlehosted.com

Right now typing any of the following into the browser ends up correctly showing the site (via https://www.example.com/):

  • http://www.example.com/
  • http://example.com/
  • example.com
  • https://www.example.com

BUT typing https://example.com does not work, and does not resolve or redirect to anything. I get this:

error message

How do I configure this correctly?

Best Answer

I have hosted several websites using Google Sites, that includes sites for educational institutions, local shops, and personal websites.

First off, you can't use a naked domain to get to work with your site on Google sites. It must have a subdomain, be it www or blahblah or whatever.

What you can do however is you can forward http://example.com or https://example.com to https://www.example.com or any subdomain that you chose. GSuite has an option to forward naked domain to your www site. However, I prefer doing it through Cloudflare. There are several reasons to like Cloudflare: it gives you a decent DNS management system which propagates fast, provides a CDN, and others.

If you want to use Cloudflare, here are the steps that you should follow:

  1. Go to page rules. Set a parmanent redirect

    domain.com/* to

    https://www.domain.com/$1

  2. Remember to put SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full (strict)

  3. It is essential to have your A records pointed somewhere. Even Google's or Blogger's IP addresses are fine. Most often I use the four IP addresses used for Blogger, which are

    216.239.32.21

    216.239.34.21

    216.239.36.21

    216.239.38.21

Infact, there are many good reference to using Cloudflare for Google Sites on Cloudflare community. Not an endorsement but Here is one which I have bookmarked to check things quickly if I forget.

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