Setting up a custom domain name
In this article
- Introduction
- What domain names you can choose
- How you can set up your own domain name
- Additional info for CloudFlare users
- Why we turn on SSL by default
- Troubleshooting
- Related article
Introduction
By default, your board is available at a URL such as yourboardname.featureupvote.com .
You can also change this url to a domain name that you own, such as feedback.yourcompany.com .
You might want to use your own domain name because:
- Using your own domain makes your customers feel more secure and happy to give feedback
- Using your own domain means your customers have a more coherent and branded user experience
- Using your own domain name gives you the flexibility to change your approach to feature request tracking
What domain names you can choose
It’s up to you. Popular choice are feedback.yourcompany.com and ideas.yourcompany.com .
How you can set up your own domain name
Changing to a custom domain name requires some technical configuration by you or your website admin.
Here’s what you need to do:
1: Choose a domain name
For example, feedback.yourcompany.com .
2: Go to Feature Upvote’s “Add custom domain name” screen
From your Feature Upvote dashboard, select Settings > Board URL.
Then click on “Add custom domain name”.
There you’ll find a longish URL starting with brd_ and ending with .customers.featureupvote.net . This is unique for each board.
Take note of this URL - you’ll need it in step 3.
3: Add a CNAME record
This will need to be done by a sysadmin or whoever manages your domain name.
In your domain name server (DNS) settings, add a CNAME record for feedback.yourcompany.com - or whatever domain name you chose in step 1 - that points to the URL from step 2 that starts with brd_ .
Your CNAME record must point to the URL from step 2. Don't point your custom domain name directly to your Feature Upvote feedback board.
4: Additional info for CloudFlare users
If you are using CloudFlare as your DNS provider, this extra info is important to follow.
In CloudFlare’s control panel, you’ll need to set the CNAME record to “Traffic to this hostname will not go through CloudFlare.” You can do this by changing from orange to the grey cloud option. Click on the orange icon and it changes to grey:
5: Add the custom domain name to your board’s settings.
From your Feature Upvote dashboard, select Settings > Board URL. Click on “Add custom domain name” and follow the prompts.
Troubleshooting
Setting up custom domain names can be confusing. Here are some problems you might encounter.
Problem: Feature Upvote says the CNAME entry is incorrect
Your CNAME record must point to the URL you’ll on your Feature Upvote dashboard’s “Add custom domain name” screen and not directly to your board’s URL.
Problem: Feature Upvote says the CNAME entry doesn’t exist
Due to the way DNS works, it can take up to 24 hours after you change your DNS settings before the whole Internet can see your changes. All you can do here is wait a few hours or a day and try again.
If you are still having problems, contact us.
Problem: The status of your domain name is always 'pending'.
This can happen if your DNS settings have a CAA record.
If this is the case, you must add "pki.goog" to your CAA record.
Why we turn on SSL
SSL will be turned on by default. This is simply because it is more secure. Any attempt to use your custom domain name using “http” will be redirected to “https”.