I renamed my built-in domain, but Squarespace changed it...?

As I understand it, the built-in domain with the randomly generated nonsense name is where we do our work before we publish our real site with the real URL? And we can change the nonsense name to something that makes sense to us, but it shouldn't be the same as our real URL? ... 

My real URL is jonesingforprosperity.com. My built-in domain was named chameleon-parrotfish-rles.squarespace.com. I changed that to generation-jones-tbp@squarespace.com. But Squarespace sent me an email telling me that I'd renamed my built-in domain jonesingforprosperity.squarespace.com.

That's not what I renamed it, because I didn't think I was allowed to name it that. If I can, that's great ... but why did Squarespace ignore/rename the name I gave it?

Because generation-jones-tbp@squarespace.com is not a valid domain name. You can't use an email address for a domain. SS stripped out what is considered bad. There are a bunch of rules that domain name have to follow. You'd have to read up on them if you want to know what they are.

Dashes are allowed so I would think generation-jones-tbp would be allowed for the built-in domain. If it is not already in use.

Let us know how it goes.

12 hours ago, creedon said:

Because generation-jones-tbp@squarespace.com is not a valid domain name. You can't use an email address for a domain.

Apologies - Yes, I know it can't be an email address. The "@" in my question was a typo. I actually did name it generation-jones-tbp.squarespace.com. Then SS changed it.

14 hours ago, GenJones1964 said:

As I understand it, the built-in domain with the randomly generated nonsense name is where we do our work before we publish our real site with the real URL? And we can change the nonsense name to something that makes sense to us, but it shouldn't be the same as our real URL?

The built-in domain name is used to administer the website, both before you publish it and afterwards. I see that it is now generation-jones-tbp.squarespace.com.

Although a random prefix (before ".squarespace.com") is assigned initially, there's no reason why you shouldn't use a name that is the same or similar to your primary domain name. For example, jonesingforprosperity.squarespace.com

The only rules are that it:

• must begin with a letter
• have between 3 and 30 characters.
• can only have letters, numbers, and hyphens, but it can't end in a hyphen.
• You can't add symbols (like $ or *) or special characters (like ü, é, or ñ).

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Okay, I see what happened and I've got it now. Thanks so much! 🌻