How to use your custom domain with our hosted knowledge base service?
Estimated Reading Time: 3 MinutesTo use your own domain name with our hosted knowledge base service, you’ll need to purchase a domain name from a domain registrar such as NameCheap.com, GoDaddy.com, Register.com, etc. After purchasing a custom domain, you’ll want to set up the appropriate DNS records on your domain registrar or host’s website. The basic thing to know about domain mapping is that you will be pointing your custom domain toward PHPKB’s servers. Once you’ve pointed your custom domain to our IP address (108.160.156.26), anyone who types in or clicks on your custom domain will be seamlessly presented with your hosted KB site in their browser.
How domain mapping works?
In order for domain mapping to work properly, you need a CNAME and A Record set up that points to the URL of your hosted knowledge base ending in .knowledgebase.co
A CNAME indicates that a domain name (www.yourdomain.com) is actually an alias for another domain name (yourdomain.knowledgebase.co). An A Record points browsers to the actual server address to retrieve the data it will display (Our IP address, 108.160.156.26).
| Type | Listed with registrar | Should point to |
|---|---|---|
| CNAME | www.yourdomain.com | yourdomain.knowledgebase.co |
| A Record | yourdomain.knowledgebase.co | 108.160.156.26 |
Custom sub-domain?
To set up a custom sub-domain with your custom domain, you can follow the above example, but with a couple of slight tweaks. Here is how that should look in your DNS settings:
| Type | Listed with registrar | Should point to |
|---|---|---|
| CNAME | custom.yourdomain.com | yourdomain.knowledgebase.co |
| A Record | yourdomain.com | 108.160.156.26 |
The alias for your CNAME record (or the host) will be the subdomain part of your domain (so in the above example, that would be “custom”).
The alias for your A Record (or the host) will typically appear as @, which represents your custom domain.
Ready to set it up?
Once you’ve purchased the domain you would like to use with your hosted knowledge base, follow these steps:
- First, set up the appropriate DNS records with your domain registrar or host. This may be tricky because different registrars provide different tools for managing DNS, and some don’t provide the ability to customize your DNS in the way that’s required for domain mapping to work correctly.
- Once you have your domain, you’ll need to set up a CNAME and an A record. If you plan to use www.domain.com, then create a CNAME to point to yourdomain.knowledgebase.co and an A record to point to our IP address (108.160.156.26).
- Once the above steps are completed, please contact us with the details so that we can perform the required steps on our end and complete the mapping of your custom domain to the hosted knowledge base service.
NOTE: When you connect a custom domain to your hosted KB site, you’re changing its DNS (Domain Name System) settings. These changes can take anywhere between 24 and 72 hours to start working properly. Domain providers refer to this waiting period as "propagation time," or the time it takes for changes to update throughout the web.
You might add a note about providing TLS certificates for custom subdomains to enable HTTPS (RECOMMENDED). In our case we need to mint a new cert for this as our in-house phpkb host used our wildcard cert.