How to Host Your Davis Weather Station on Your Own Domain

A weather station on a custom domain looks professional, builds trust with visitors, and makes the site feel like yours. Instead of weatherlink.com/user/12345 or mysite.netlify.app, you get weather.yourname.com or yourcityweather.com.

This guide covers the two main ways to put your Davis station on your own domain: the self-hosted path and the fully managed path with Pro Weather.

What you need for any approach

Regardless of which route you take, you need a domain name. You can buy one from any registrar (Namecheap, Cloudflare, Porkbun, Google Domains, or your hosting provider). A .com domain costs roughly €10–15 per year.

You will also need to point the domain to wherever your site is hosted, usually by changing DNS records at your registrar.

Option 1: Self-hosted with a Raspberry Pi and a web host

If you run CumulusMX or WeeWX at home, the typical flow is:

1. Buy a domain and choose a subdomain (e.g. weather.yourname.com)
2. Set up a web hosting account with a provider that offers shared hosting (€3–10/month)
3. Point your domain's DNS to the web host's nameservers or IP address
4. Upload your weather software's generated HTML files to the host, usually over FTP
5. Set up SSL, either through the host's auto-SSL feature or manually with Let's Encrypt
6. Keep the upload pipeline working: FTP credentials can change, PHP versions can break templates, and your machine at home must stay online to keep generating fresh files

The total ongoing cost is the domain (€10–15/year) plus the web host (€36–120/year), plus your time maintaining everything.

Option 2: Fully managed with automatic SSL

With a hosted service like Pro Weather, connecting a custom domain takes a few minutes and SSL is handled automatically:

1. Buy your domain from any registrar
2. In your Pro Weather dashboard, open Domain and enter your domain
3. Follow the DNS instructions: add a CNAME record pointing to Pro Weather's verification target, or configure a nameserver delegation if the service handles it
4. Wait for DNS to propagate (usually a few minutes, sometimes up to an hour)
5. SSL is provisioned automatically by Vercel, with auto-renewal built in

That is it. No FTP, no certificate renewal, no web host to manage alongside your weather software.

Step	Self-hosted	Pro Weather
Buy domain	Same	Same
DNS setup	Point to web host's nameservers	Add a CNAME record
Web host	Rent separately (€3–10/month)	Included
Upload site files	FTP, manual or scripted	Automatic
SSL	Manual or host auto-SSL	Automatic, auto-renewing
Ongoing maintenance	FTP, scripts, PHP updates, hardware	None

DNS basics: what you actually need to know

DNS configuration sounds intimidating but is straightforward. Here is what matters:

• A record maps your domain to a server IP address
• CNAME record maps a subdomain (like weather.yourname.com) to another domain
• Nameservers delegate control of your domain to your hosting provider

For the managed route with Pro Weather, you typically add a CNAME record from your subdomain to the Pro Weather verification target. The dashboard shows you exactly which values to enter. No DNS expertise is required.

Why your own domain matters

Beyond looking professional, a custom domain gives you:

• Portability. If you switch hosting providers, you keep the domain. Your visitors do not need to learn a new URL.
• Email. You can set up email addresses at your domain for weather inquiries or alerts.
• Trust. Visitors are more likely to trust a site at weather.yourcity.com than a long URL on a shared platform.
• Ownership. The domain is yours. You are not renting space on someone else's platform.

Getting started

If you already have a domain and want to connect it to a fully managed weather site, Pro Weather handles the hard parts. Your site will have automatic SSL, no hosting to manage, and your data updated every 10 minutes.

If you prefer the self-hosted route, see CumulusMX vs WeeWX for help choosing your software, and Best Weather Station Software for a Personal Website for the full picture.