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Your content hub is a website Narrative runs on your behalf. Approved copy publishes into it, and answer engines, search engines and people read what it renders. You do not install anything, and there is no plugin to keep updated. Every hub starts on an address we provide and works immediately. Putting it on your own web address is a second, optional step, and it is worth doing: links and citations then point at your domain rather than at ours.

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Create your hub

  1. Open Personalize and find the Content hub card.
  2. Click Create my hub.
  3. Wait about forty seconds. Narrative builds the site, its database, its search-engine files and its publishing connection while you watch.
When it finishes you have a live hub at an address like your-company-com.hubs.yournarrative.ai. Open it and you will see a real site, server-rendered, with its structured data already in place.
Nothing about your existing website changes. A content hub sits alongside it.

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Put it on your own address

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1. Choose the first part

In the hub’s settings, find Use your own address. You will see a box with your domain already filled in beside it:
Type whatever you would like the first part to be. narrative, answers, library and guides are all common. Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only. Click Continue. Narrative spends about half a minute working out which DNS records you need, then shows them.

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2. Add two records

You will see two records. Add both wherever your domain’s DNS is managed — that is usually whoever you bought the domain from, or whoever runs your website. Both records are shown in full in the app with a copy button beside each one.
Leave the _acme-challenge record in place after your hub goes live. It is used again automatically when your security certificate renews, roughly every ninety days. Deleting it does not break anything today, and breaks your hub about three months later.
Some DNS providers want the name exactly as we show it (_acme-challenge.narrative) and others want the whole address (_acme-challenge.narrative.your-company.com). If one is rejected, try the other — it is the commonest difference between providers.

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3. We take it from here

Narrative checks your records every couple of minutes. Once both are correct it requests a publicly trusted security certificate, which usually takes two to five minutes, and then starts serving your hub on your address. You do not need to stay on the page. The states you will see are: Your hub keeps serving on its original address the entire time, including while you are part-way through.

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When something is wrong

Narrative tells you what it actually found rather than leaving you to guess. Each message names the problem and what to change.

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Nothing answers for your address yet

Not a problem. DNS changes take anywhere from a minute to a few hours to spread, depending on your provider and the record’s TTL. If it has been more than four hours, check the record’s name — see the note about partial and full names above.

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Your address points somewhere else

Something already answers for that name, and it is not us. Usually the name is in use by an older page or a redirect. Either pick a different first part, or remove the existing record.

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There is an A record instead of a CNAME

Delete the A record and add the CNAME instead. The two cannot coexist on the same name, and most DNS providers will let you create the conflict without warning you.

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Your DNS is proxying the address

Cloudflare and similar services can sit in front of a record and answer for it themselves, which stops us serving your hub and stops the certificate being issued. In Cloudflare, open the DNS record and click the orange cloud so it turns grey — “DNS only”. Other providers call this proxying, CDN or acceleration.

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The proof record is missing

The _acme-challenge record has not been published. Without it the certificate can never be issued, so this one does not resolve itself with time.

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The proof record is from an earlier attempt

There is an _acme-challenge record, but it holds a value from a previous try. Replace its value with the one currently shown in the app.

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A CAA record is blocking our certificate authority

Rare, and invisible unless something looks for it. Your domain has a CAA record listing which certificate authorities may issue for it, and ours is not on the list. Add a CAA record permitting pki.goog, or ask whoever manages your DNS to. If you already have CAA records you are adding to the set, not replacing it.

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What we never do

  • Touch anything else in your DNS. We only ever read it. Every record is added by you, or by your DNS provider at your instruction.
  • Ask for access to your domain. We have no credentials for your registrar and cannot change your records.
  • Take your site down. Your hub and your main website are separate. Adding a hub address does not affect your www record, your email, or anything else.
  • Publish without you. Copy reaches your hub when you approve it.

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Keeping your own edits

If you edit something in your hub by hand, Narrative will not overwrite it. Publishing the same page again leaves your version in place, because a decision a person made outranks anything we generated.

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Questions people ask

Can I move my hub to a different address later? Yes. Add the new address the same way. The old one keeps working until you remove its DNS records. Does this affect my main website’s SEO? Your hub is its own set of pages with its own canonical addresses. It does not compete with your main site for the same URLs, and it links back to you. What happens if I stop using Narrative? Your hub keeps serving what has already been published. It stops receiving new copy. Can I use a subdirectory like your-company.com/library instead? Not today. A hub answers on its own address.