How to setup my domain DNS

This guide will explain how to configure your DNS entries for a domain hosted on Front-Commerce Cloud.

For this section, let’s assume that you own a retro computer part shop called Retro Computer Parts.

While setting up your cloud access, the Front-Commerce team must have communicate what we call the CNAME target. The CNAME target is like your website ID on our cluster and its format is like : retro-computer-parts.front-commerce.cloud

Requirements

A domain: in our example it will be retro-computer-parts.shop
An access to your registrar configuration: every domain name is registred with a registrar, if you own your domain, reach your IT or Marketing service to know who can access the registrar configuration and update DNS entries. If your domain name is managed by the integrator you’re working with, you’ll need to reach them to process DNS operations.
Your CNAME Target: this domain is like an ID of your website on our cluster, the format of this domain is normalized and ends with .front-commerce.cloud. This domain must have been communicated to you by the Front-Commerce Team. In our example the domain is retro-computer-parts.front-commerce.cloud. The CNAME Target is only here to link your website to our cluster and serves nothing, search engine won't care about this domain.

Staging domain

When setting up your project on our cloud, the Front-Commerce team would have ask you the domain you want to use for staging environment, if you don’t have specific needs, our team will setup a default staging domain that match the CNAME Target, in our example, it would be retro-computer-parts.staging.front-commerce.cloud

To link your staging domain to your Front-Commerce cloud staging environment, you need to follow these steps, in our example we want to use preview.retro-computer-parts.shop

Contact Front-Commerce support trough cockpit to ask us to add this domain for staging. And wait for confirmation before proceeding to further operations.
In your DNS configuration, add the entry preview as a CNAME that points to your staging CNAME Target (example retro-computer-parts.staging.front-commerce.cloud).
Wait for the new entry propagation.
Enjoy your staging domain on your custom domain.

Production domain

You’re up and ready to go production? Great! Let’s set-up your domain to serve your brand new Storefront!

Let’s say that you want your shop to have this url : https://www.retro-computer-parts.shop.

You must :

Reach Front-Commerce team to communicate the final URL of your website and wait for their validation before processing further operations.
Create or update your DNS entry www and make it point to the CNAME of your CNAME Target (in our example : retro-computer-parts.front-commerce.cloud
Wait for the propagation to root DNS server.
Let customer discover your brand new Website !

Most of the website uses www subdomain to serve their website, however, some may wants to serve what is called the APEX domain. The APEX domain is the root of the DNS entry, in our example http://retro-computer-parts.shop. To link your domain to our cluster, we use CNAME mechanisms, a lot of DNS providers doesn’t support CNAME for APEX domain, if it’s your case, please check the FAQ below to learn how to handle this case.

FAQ

Why do you use CNAME over classic A entries for DNS ?

CNAME mechanism allow you to add a simple entry for DNS. Since we manage the front-commerce.cloud domain, it will allow us to process operation on our cluster without requiring you to make any DNS modification. This way, we can for example prepare your website for a traffic peak for example, or quickly handle an outage to make your website always available.

I want to make a redirection from APEX domain to `www` subdomain, how can i do it ?

Some DNS Registrar allow to use CNAME on APEX domain, it your registrar allow you, you just need to point your APEX domain to the CNAME Target. Some registrar have documentations on how to handle this case :

If you can’t bind your APEX domain to a CNAME entry, we have some suggestions for you:

Make the APEX domain point toward a server you own and setup a vhost that will redirect to the www subdomain.
Reach our support to setup an APEX redirection.
Monitor the www subdomain to get the final IP and update the APEX to point to this IP.

When heading to my CNAME Target, i see an error message, what to do ?

Target domain serve nothing, it’s just a DNS link to our cluster, this is normal to see an error page.