CNAME forwarding is the preferred method for connecting a domain name you’ve already purchased to your website on Site Factory.

A CNAME record redirects site visitors from the domain name they entered in their browsers to another domain name—in your case, your website running on Site Factory. Using CNAME to point to a website location instead of an actual IP address also allows Site Factory to better guarantee high-availability.

To use a CNAME record for your domain name:

• Contact your domain name registrar and learn how to manage your domain name. Typically, you can access DNS controls by logging in to your domain name registrar’s website. Your domain name registrar is your best resource when it comes to managing your domain name on their website.

• Using your domain name registrar’s instructions, create the www subdomain of your domain, and any other required subdomains.

  Subdomains are addresses based on your second-level domain name, but prefixed with a descriptor, such as www or blog. For example, if your domain name is example.com, you can create www.example.com along with any other required subdomains.

• Create a CNAME entry or record to the subdomain (and, separately, any other subdomains) to the Site Factory address for the site. For example, the DNS entry for xyz.customer.com would be a CNAME record pointing to xyz.customerfactory.acsitefactory.com.

After you create a CNAME record for your custom domain, you must add your domain to your website on Site Factory.

Adding your domain

To add the www subdomain (and any other subdomains you created for your domain name) to your website:

• Sign in to the Site Factory Management Console on your production environment, find the website to which you want to add a custom domain name, and then open its actions menu.

  Manage Domains is located near the bottom of the site actions menu

  Important

  Domains added to non-production environments are removed when you restage a Factory to the non-production environment.

• Click Manage Domains.

• In the Associate a domain section, enter your domain name (such as www.example.com) in all lowercase letters.

• Click Associate domain.

Your www subdomain directs visitors to your website and all its URLs will be listed.

Some users won’t type the www when visiting your website, so forward your domain name (such as example.com) to the www subdomain (www.example.com) based on your domain name registrar’s instructions.

Your website’s visitors can then find your website with or without the www.

Troubleshooting domain issues

You can add domain names to only one environment. Attempting to add a domain to a second environment causes Site Factory to both fail with a logged warning message, and send an email like the following example to the user who attempted to add the domain:

The following domains couldn't be added to the [sitename] site:
[domain list]. If you want to add this domain to the [sitename]
site, remove it from the site that has claimed the domain and then add it
again at [factory URL].

To resolve the problem, remove the domain name from both environments and then add the domain name to the single, appropriate environment.

Continue to the next step >

Using CNAME with your website

The following domains couldn't be added to the [sitename] site:
[domain list]. If you want to add this domain to the [sitename]
site, remove it from the site that has claimed the domain and then add it
again at [factory URL].