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Choose Your Preferred Domain
Choose Your Preferred Domain

Learn how to set your preferred domain (URL) using CNAME records without IP addresses

Gayathri Rajendiran avatar
Written by Gayathri Rajendiran
Updated over a month ago

The domain of your EngagementHQ site determines your URL, so it's important to select a domain that aligns with your brand. When choosing a domain, there are a few things to consider; for example, you want to make it memorable while optimizing it for SEO.

There are two options for selecting a domain:

  1. Use a subdomain of your organization's website

  2. You purchase and manage a domain

Use a Subdomain

A subdomain is a domain that is separate from but contained within another domain. Subdomains need to be created by the owner of the primary domain, in this case, usually your organization. It allows you to use .gov, .govt, or .edu domains, which have more credibility with search engines, and it may also be a policy for your organization to use sub-domains.

Your subdomain will look something like engage.yourwebsite.gov.au, in which "yourwebsite" is the domain and "engage" is the subdomain. Please note the "www" of some websites is also a subdomain; your IT team will need to create this as well.

Once you have chosen your subdomain, you will need to:

  1. Ask your IT team to set up a CNAME record to direct the new subdomain(s) to the EngagementHQ server in your location:

  2. If your CNAME record is set correctly, you will see this message when you enter your subdomain URL in your browser: "Domain is pointing to EngagementHQ." This message means that your subdomain points toward our servers. Please note that it may take several hours for your domain to point to EngagementHQ; consider this when planning your launch.

  3. Contact our support team via chat or email to complete the redirection.

Please note that you cannot add "http://" or “https://" when configuring the CNAME record. Additionally, we recommend a 60-second TTL (Time to Live, or the time it takes for change to take effect) or as close as possible.

If you cannot access your EngagementHQ site after applying the domain, it may be blocked internally. Check with your IT team to ensure there's no block.

You Purchase and Manage a Domain

Another option is to purchase and manage a domain yourself. We recommend GoDaddy to check availability, purchase, and manage your domain.

Once you have purchased your domain, you must set it up. The instructions below assume that you are using the root (yourwebsite.com, excluding the "www" or anything else before your domain) as your domain, not a subdomain.

  1. Set up "www" as a CNAME record to the EngagementHQ server in your location. The TTL should be as low as possible.

  2. If you can, use a CNAME record on the root. Some DNS Management tools allow you to do this via an ANAME record. If you cannot, set up the root domain as a 301 redirect to the www of the domain (for example, yoursite.com via 301 redirects to www.yoursite.com), which you have set up in step 1 above. In this setup, the www of your domain becomes the primary address, and all traffic redirects there. The hostname can be set to '@' if it isn't already set automatically after setting the CNAME to 'www'.

  3. If your CNAME record is set correctly, you will see this message when you enter your domain in your browser: "Domain is pointing to EngagementHQ." This message means that it points toward our servers. Please note that it may take several hours for your domain to point to EngagementHQ; consider this when planning your launch.

  4. Contact our support team via chat or email to confirm.

Domain Settings with GoDaddy

To set up your GoDaddy domain to work with EngagementHQ, you’ll need to follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your GoDaddy account, go into your domain, and select Manage DNS.

2. In DNS Management, add a CNAME for www that points to one of the following:

3. Enable Forwarding to redirect traffic from the root domain to your www subdomain. Follow this template and Save. Now, example.com will forward to www.example.com, which in turn will arrive at our servers.

4. We need to associate your domain with your site, so contact us by chat or email to complete the domain setup.

You can have multiple domains pointing to the same EngagementHQ site, but only one can be your primary domain; all other domains will redirect visitors to your primary domain.

What’s Next?

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