Integrations

Hosted Blog

A fully hosted blog on your own subdomain, no CMS required.

Grandranker hosts a blog on your own subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com). You add one DNS record; every article you publish goes live automatically, with SSL. No code to paste.

The Hosted Blog connect wizard in Grandranker

What you need: a domain you own and access to its DNS settings so you can add one CNAME record.

How to Connect

A three-step wizard under Integrations → Hosted Blog.

1. Choose a subdomain

The field arrives pre-filled — usually blog., or news. / insights. if blog. already points somewhere. Type your own if you prefer, then choose Continue.

Never use your website's own address (www.yourdomain.com or the bare domain). Pointing that at us takes your website offline.

2. Add the CNAME

The wizard shows the exact CNAME record to create — Name / Host and Value / Target, both with copy buttons. Most registrars want just the label (blog); some want the full name (blog.yourdomain.com). The wizard shows both forms.

On Cloudflare? Open the Cloudflare guide and choose Connect Cloudflare to have the record created for you. We ask only for DNS edit permission and store no credentials. Use either the automatic setup or the manual record, not both.

Change subdomain takes you back a step without losing anything.

3. Go live

Nothing left to click. The Setup progress checklist refreshes every few seconds:

  • Subdomain saved
  • CNAME record found — when your record resolves to our target
  • SSL certificate — issued automatically
  • Blog live — serving over HTTPS

In Blog appearance, pick a background color (picker or six-digit hex) and click Save appearance. Text, cards, links and borders adjust automatically so light and dark backgrounds stay readable. Pages are cached, so a color change can take up to five minutes to appear.

When the status reads Live, the wizard links to your blog URL.

Step-by-step for your DNS provider

Cloudflare logoCloudflareIncludes our one-click automatic setup GoDaddy logoGoDaddyAdd the CNAME in Domain Portfolio → DNS Namecheap logoNamecheapAdd the CNAME in Advanced DNS Squarespace logoSquarespaceAdd a custom record in Squarespace Domains Wix logoWixAdd the alias in Manage DNS Records Bluehost logoBluehostAdd the record in the Bluehost Portal Hostinger logoHostingerAdd the CNAME in hPanel DNS records IONOS logoIONOSCreate the subdomain, then its CNAME

Provider not listed? The record is the same everywhere: a CNAME with the Host and Target shown in the wizard.

Designing your blog

Once the blog is Live, the Blog designer appears on the same screen (Integrations → Hosted Blog → Designer). Changes save automatically and show in the live preview.

  • Look. Pick Clean, Magazine or Editorial — each sets header, article list, article and font in one click. Fine-tune sets those four individually. Below: logo upload, logo height, and whether your business name shows. Both link back to your main website.
  • Menu. Up to 8 header links (each with a dropdown) plus 2 buttons, and up to 8 footer links. Put Impressum, Datenschutz, contact and terms in the footer.
  • Pages. Your own Markdown pages, each at its own address — /impressum, /datenschutz, /kontakt. Uncheck Published to hide one. Published pages appear in the sitemap.
  • Advanced. Choose Show advanced settings to reveal it.

Advanced

  • Custom CSS. Applied after our styles, so it wins.
  • Custom head code. Goes into every page's <head> as written — cookie banner, analytics, verification tags. Scripts run on your blog, so only paste code you trust. It does not run in the designer preview; open the blog itself to test.
  • Serve the blog under your main domain. If your site proxies a path (for example a Next.js rewrite of /blog/*), enter the address visitors see, such as https://example.com/blog. Canonical tags, sitemap entries, structured data and internal links then use that address instead of the subdomain. Leave empty if you are not proxying.

Running under GDPR/DSGVO? Leave the GA4 field empty and choose the System font preset — the blog then loads no third-party requests at all until your own consent tool allows them.

Publishing & Verifying

Nothing to configure — published articles appear on the blog automatically. To verify, check that the status line reads Live, then open the blog URL and confirm your articles render over HTTPS.

Disconnecting removes the subdomain and stops serving the blog. Your articles and pages stay in Grandranker.

Troubleshooting

The checklist is stuck on "Waiting for your DNS record"

DNS propagation takes minutes to hours. Confirm the CNAME exists and its target matches the Value / Target in the wizard exactly, then leave the page open — it re-checks itself.

If the checklist says your record points somewhere else, it names the target it found. Edit the record to the value the wizard shows.

My registrar rejected the record or created a weird name

  • Wrong name format. Entering blog.yourdomain.com at a provider that auto-appends your domain gives blog.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com. Use just blog there. Others want the full name — the wizard shows both.
  • Wrong record type. It must be a CNAME, not an A record.

The Cloudflare automatic setup fails

The API token needs Zone → DNS → Edit permission for the zone containing your subdomain. Read-only or wrong-zone tokens cannot create the record.

Status shows "Setup failed"

Re-check the DNS record against the wizard's values and fix any mismatch — the page retries on its own. If the record is correct and it still fails, contact support.

Still stuck? [email protected]

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