The 'Manage >> yourdomain.com >> Settings >> Connect Hosting' section is used to configure hosting for your ads.txt file, or for your app-ads.txt file. This service is provided as an alternative to hosting the file yourself, and works by redirecting visitors to the copy hosted on our servers. The redirect directive shown in the section always names the file this domain is for, so an app-ads.txt file redirects /app-ads.txt.

To use the 'Connect Hosting' functionality, enable the feature via the 'Connect Hosting' section, then choose your platform from the dropdown that appears and follow the steps it gives you. The address you are redirecting to is the same whichever platform you are on; only the way you configure the redirect differs.

If you have an existing .htaccess file, simply add the redirect directive provided in the 'Connect Hosting' section to your existing .htaccess file. The directive can be placed anywhere in your .htaccess file, however if you have complex mod_rewrite directives in place we recommend placing it before these.

If you do not have an existing .htaccess file, simply create a text file called '.htaccess' using your favorite text editor and add the rewrite directive, then upload the file to the directory which would normally contain your ads.txt file at the root of your domain.

An .htaccess file is only read by Apache, LiteSpeed and cPanel hosting, and most websites are not on those. The Connect Hosting section asks which platform you are on and gives you the exact steps for it, and setting up your ads.txt redirect, by platform has the same instructions in full for Cloudflare, nginx, Apache, Squarespace, Wix, IIS, Caddy and the platforms that cannot redirect at all.

If your site runs WordPress, do not set up a redirect: install our free plugin instead, which serves the file from your own domain with no server configuration at all.

If you disable the ads.txt hosting feature please ensure you remove the redirect directive from your .htaccess file as your hosted ads.txt file will return a '404 File Not Found' error until the hosting is re-enabled.

Automating this for many domains? You can also enable Connect Hosting programmatically via our API — see /support/api-documentation/#domain-hosting for the full reference.

If you experience any difficulty setting up the redirect, please contact support.