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How to connect a 123 Reg domain to your beam.page site (step by step)

by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 23 July 2026 · 6 min read

To connect a 123 Reg domain to your beam.page site, you add one CNAME record in 123 Reg's Advanced DNS: Hostname www, Destination set to the target beam gives you. That's the job. 123 Reg is one of the most popular registrars with UK small businesses, and its menus have moved around over the years, so the main thing is knowing where Advanced DNS actually lives — and that the bare domain is handled with Web Forwarding, not a DNS record. Here's the whole thing.

This is the deep version for 123 Reg. For the quick cross-registrar steps see the custom-domain guide; there are also walkthroughs for Namecheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare and Squarespace. You'll need the Lone Creator plan (£9.99/month — custom domains are the paid feature), your domain in 123 Reg, and five minutes.

Step 1 — Ask your AI to attach the domain

On beam you attach a domain by asking. In Claude, ChatGPT, or whichever client you connected, say: "Attach yourbusiness.com to my beam site." beam registers the domain against your project and hands back the record to add — a CNAME whose destination looks like d1a2b3c4.cloudfront.net. Copy it. (Your projects page is a read-only view — nothing to set there.)

Step 2 — Find Advanced DNS in 123 Reg

Sign in at 123-reg.co.uk and open your Control Panel. Under Domain names, find the domain and click Manage. On the domain's management page, look for Advanced DNS (sometimes shown as Manage DNS or under a "DNS" heading). That's the page with your host records.

Quick check: make sure the domain is on 123 Reg's own nameservers (the default). If someone's pointed the nameservers elsewhere, these Advanced DNS records won't do anything and you'd add the CNAME wherever the nameservers actually point.

Step 3 — Add the www CNAME

In Advanced DNS, add a new record with:

• Type: CNAME
• Hostname: www — just www; 123 Reg adds your domain on the end automatically
• Destination / Points to: the target beam gave you (the …cloudfront.net address) — no http://, no trailing slash
• TTL: leave the default

Save it. If 123 Reg left a default www parking record in there, remove it so there's only the one CNAME. That's the only record beam needs.

Step 4 — The bare domain (Web Forwarding)

The CNAME covers www.yourbusiness.com. For the bare root, DNS rules don't allow a plain CNAME, so use 123 Reg's Web Forwarding feature (on the domain's management page, near the DNS options). Forward yourbusiness.com to https://www.yourbusiness.com as a permanent (301) redirect. Now anyone who leaves off the www still lands on your site.

Step 5 — Wait for the green light

beam checks for the record, issues a free HTTPS certificate, and puts your site live on the domain. This usually takes a few minutes to an hour. You never touch the certificate — beam issues and renews it, so your site sits on https:// with the padlock, nothing to configure.

The 123 Reg gotchas, in one place

• Advanced DNS is under Manage — control panel → domain → Manage → Advanced DNS.
• Hostname is www — 123 Reg appends the domain; don't type the full address.
• Bare domain uses Web Forwarding, not a DNS record — 301 the root to the www version.
• Nameservers must be 123 Reg's — if they point elsewhere, edit DNS there instead.

Questions