Pointing your domain name to coreFORCE Basic or Standard (Lite

Created by Ezra Weinstein, Modified on Thu, 31 Aug 2023 at 11:49 AM by Carrie Despaux

Ready to make your coreFORCE Basic or Standard site public?

The process of making your site available to your customers is called "going live".  The final step is pointing your domain name to coreFORCE Basic/Standard so that customers will see your domain.


But, before you go live, there are several steps to take to make sure that your site will run smoothly. Look at the "Getting Started" tab in Site Defaults to see if you're ready to go live.


When you are ready to go live, you will need to point your domain name to coreFORCE Basic/Standard.


There are three options for doing this:

  1. If you want the bare domain of your website (for example https://mygunstore.com) to point to coreFORCE, Coreware must host your DNS records.
  2. If you want to retain control of your DNS records, you can use the www subdomain (for example https://www.mygunstore.com) to point to coreFORCE.
  3. If you have an existing website that you want to keep and you want to make coreFORCE Basic/Standard a subdomain (for example https://shop.mygunstore.com), you can make a subdomain that points to coreFORCE.

Important note: once your domain name is pointing to coreFORCE Basic/Standard, you must let Coreware know so that we can issue an SSL certificate for your site.  Without an SSL certificate, your customers will see a message saying something like "This connection is not private; attackers might be trying to steal your information.." 


Option #0 Give Coreware access to your DNS provider.

If making changes to DNS feels like it's beyond your technical ability, we'll be happy to make the required changes for you.  If you use GoDaddy or Google Domains, you will not be able to share your password to let us make changes.  You will need to add a Coreware user as a "delegate" or "manager" of your account.  


Please submit a ticket to get the details of who grant permission to.

To add a delegate on GoDaddy, the instructions are here

To share domain management in Google Domains, the instructions are here

To add an account member in CloudFlare, the instructions are here

To add a domain manager in NameCheap, the instructions are here

For other providers, you may be able to give us your login credentials in a ticket.

   

Option #1 Have Coreware host the DNS for your website.

This will require you to export your DNS records (the Zone file) from your current DNS host and send them to Coreware.

 

A. You will need to export your DNS records to a Zone file

To export DNS records in GoDaddy, follow instructions here

To export DNS records in CloudFlare, follow instructions here 

To export DNS records in Google Domains, follow instructions here (Please choose BIND format, not YAML)

 

B. When you are ready to go live, you will need to point your domain name to the Coreware-provided name servers.

Once we receive your DNS records, we will give you a list of name servers that are now hosting your DNS. 


To change name servers in GoDaddy, follow instructions here

To change name servers in CloudFlare, follow instructions here

To change name servers in Google Domains, follow instructions here  


Once you have changed your name servers, Coreware will issue an SSL certificate for your site, and the site will be live.*

C. If desired, Coreware will create a user for you to log into AWS to make changes to your DNS records.

Note that the AWS user interface is not user-friendly.

 

Option #2 To retain control of your DNS, point the "www" subdomain to coreFORCE Basic/Standard.  

 

A. Create a CNAME record in your DNS so that www points to corefire.shop

corefire.shop is an "alias" to the following URL:


dualstack.corefflloadbalancer-967867282.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com


To add a CNAME in GoDaddy follow instructions here

To add a CNAME in Google Domains follow instructions here


B. Let Coreware support know that you have created the CNAME so Coreware can issue an SSL certificate for your site.  

You will need to add an additional CNAME record to your domain in order to get an SSL certificate for your site.  Coreware will provide you with the name and value to put into that CNAME record during the Go-live process.*

 

C. If you want your bare domain to forward to www, it is your responsibility to configure forwarding on your web host.  

To forward a domain in GoDaddy follow instructions here

Note for GoDaddy: Do not delete the "A" record for the bare domain; this is needed for domain forwarding.

Domain forwarding is different for every web host and not every web host supports it. Instructions to set up forwarding on other hosts is beyond what Coreware is able to provide.  **


Option #3 To keep an existing website as "www" for your domain, use a different subdomain for coreFORCE Basic/Standard.


A. Create the CNAME for your subdomain just like in option #2 above.

B. Let Coreware know what domain you intend to use.  

 

A custom subdomain will require additional configuration in coreFORCE.


* If your domain provider is CloudFlare, you may already have a Keyless SSL certificate that CloudFlare provides, so Coreware will not need to issue an SSL certificate for you.

** Note that when redirecting/forwarding the bare domain, https requests to the bare domain may fail depending on how the host implements forwarding.

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