Custom Domain (CNAME)
Instructions for setting up a custom subdomain, adding in cname records
By default your Synap portal will use your business name to set up a portal at Synap's .ac domain. Springfield Elementary would have an initial URL that looked like:
Here springfield is the subdomain and synap.ac is the primary domain. All of our Pro & Enterprise plans come with an option to set up a custom subdomain to link your portal to a primary domain that you own. If Springfield Elementary owned the domain springfieldelementary.io then they could have their Synap portal live at any of the following:
🧐 Choosing a subdomain
The subdomain is the first part of the URL, and can be anything you want. In order to create one you must own the primary domain. This can be anything you want, as long as it is not already in use by another part of your website. We recommend choosing something fairly short and easy to remember.
Some common examples are:
practice
learn
training
exams
academy
Once you have decided on a subdomain, let your Synap account manager know, so that we can generate an authentication record to add.
💻 Installing the DNS Records
Once you have let us know your desired subdomain, we will email you two DNS records to add to your website hosting.
The first of these is a CNAME record that points from your subdomain to the Synap server. You should add it with the following settings:
Type: CNAME
Name: practice (or whatever subdomain you have chosen)
Value: app.synap.ac.
TTL: 300 (or as low as you can set it)
🧠 The name of the record ('practice', learning etc) will change depending on which subdomain you have chosen.
Depending on your DNS registrar, you may need to enter the whole domain in this field, i.e. practice.mywebsite.com, however most DNS registrars automatically add this in, so you should only need to add the subdomain itself. Please check your domain provider docs for more
Below shows an example of this record being installed using the Amazon Route53 DNS registrar, but if you are using another system such as GoDaddy or 123Reg, the steps will be almost identical.
Once you have done this, there is a second DNS record to add - the steps are exactly the same, but the record contains a randomly generated string which sometimes causes confusion. This second record is important as it authorises us to add your subdomain to our SSL certificate, which means that your site will be secure (i.e. sent via HTTPS).
The Name and Value fields of these records are unique to each client, but we have provided an example one below (note 🚨 DO NOT install this on your DNS registrar, it is here as an example only)
Type: CNAME
Name: _467f77d8ebb437c7ce70910d85bf54a3.practice.mywebsite.com.
Value: _3104b746df3ff14b2dc2ee6af180ed5b.tfmgdnztqk.acm-validations.aws.
TTL: 300 (or as low as you can set it)
There is a randomly generated string at the beginning of both the name and the value, which stats with an underscore.
For the Value, the whole string should be entered, starting with the underscore _ and ending with .acm-validations.aws.
For the Name, you probably do not need to enter '.mywebsite.com' - as above, your DNS provider will probably pre-fill this for you, but check your settings and speak to your developer if you are not sure.
As soon as you've completed this step please let your account manager know, the records can take can around 24-48 hours to update. There are online tools you can use to check this yourself https://dnschecker.org, your account manager will perform more checks on their end and let you know if there are any mistakes.
Once the records are correctly in place and your account manager has been informed we aim to finish the set up within 1-3 working days.
⏳ Watch & Wait
Whilst you will often see a result within an hour, It can take up to 48 hours for new DNS changes to fully propagate. In the meantime, you can still access your Synap site from the old subdomain, and we will let you know when the new domain is ready.
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