Going live
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Introduction
When your site is looking hot and you're ready to rock, you'll want to take your site out of trial mode and make it live. Taking a site live means a few things:
- You're ready to pay for your site
- You're ready to buy a domain name (www.mybusiness.com) and allow people to access your site by typing that address into their web browser
- OR you've got a domain name that currently goes to your old site, and you want to switch it over to your brand-spanking-new online business.
Let's get started!
Who is this for? This guide is for anyone who's ready to take their site live and show it off to the world! Some sections can be skipped by those with more advanced knowledge - these sections will be marked accordingly.
A few concepts to get started. If you already know what a domain name is, what an IP address is and how DNS works, you can skip this section.
Before we get stuck into the nitty gritty, there's some concepts and words you'll need to know and understand. It's not hard or difficult though - we'll be ready to get to the exciting bit in a jiffy.
Domain names, IP addresses and DNS
What is a domain name? Yahoo.com is a domain name. So is google.com, cnn.com and so on. Domain names are those addresses you type in the address bar of your web browser, so for you your domain name will be something like awesomebusiness.com. By the way, domain names are always in lower case.
What's an IP address? Well, IP addresses are Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. They're addresses to a computer somewhere on the internet - when you're online, your computer has an IP address, and so does every website you visit. IP addresses look like this 123.123.123.123 - a little like a phone number, but the dots are needed.
What is DNS? Domain Name System (DNS) is a database system that translates a computer's fully qualified domain name into an IP address.
Networked computers use IP addresses to locate and connect to each other, but IP addresses can be difficult for people to remember. For example, on the Internet, it's much easier to remember and use a browser to type a domain name such as www.amazon.com than it is to remember and type its corresponding IP address (207.171.166.48).
For more details, see the Understanding DNS article.
Going Live Step By Step
Step 1. Get a Domain Name
If you haven't bought a domain name yet, buy one. It should be something easy to remember, preferably your business name. There are a large number of domain name registrars out there if you search for them. If you've already got one from a previous site, no problems.
You must first upgrade a trial site before you can point it to a new domain name that you've registered.
To learn more about the upgrade process, see Upgrading your trial site.
Step 2a. Add your Domain to the system
After upgrading your site, the next step involves using the Admin Console to set your domain name within the system. Follow these steps:
1. In the Admin Console, choose Admin > Manage Domain Name.
2. In the right sidebar, choose Set up a domain name.
3. The Add a New Domain window appears. Enter the following information as described below:
• In the Domain Name field, enter the domain name that you've registered without the www, such as: domain.com
• In the Start Page menu, select the home page (often index.htm or index.html) that will load first when the user visits the site.
• In the Country menu, select the country where you are located, such as United States.
• In the Culture menu, select the language and location for your site, such as English (United States).
• In most cases, you'll use the default setting in the DNS service section, to select the option: I will redelegate my domain and use this service to host it.
Note: If you'd prefer to use an external DNS service, check the second radio button, to select the option: I will be using an external DNS server. See the article titled Using an external DNS service for domain names to learn more about this option.
• In most cases, you'll use the default setting in the Email Settings section, to select the option: I will use this service for email.
Note: You must use the Business Catalyst service to host the DNS in order to use the Business Catalyst email service.
• Unless you are setting up a group of domain names, keep the checkbox selected next to the option: Use this domain as the default
This option is enabled by default and cannot be changed unless you have set up multiple domains.
• In the WWW record options menu, leave the default setting: Forward the www domain record to this domain.
In almost all situations, you'll want to use this setting, unless you are planning on creating a separate A-Record for the domain, or if you do not want to create a www record for this domain. See the section below titled Setting up a Hostname (A-Record) for DNS for more information.
When you are finished, the form will look similar to this:
4. Click Save to save the changes. The green alert message indicates that the details have been saved successfully.
5. Click Close to close the Add a New Domain window.
For details on setting up additional DNS records such as A and CNAME records, see DNS article.
Step 2b. Email settings for your Domain
As mentioned above, to use our service for mail. Simply select "I will use this service for email" and you're set. There'll be more on setting up email later.
If you're an advanced user and you'd like to use another service for your email, In the above settings, simply choose the second option to 'I will be using an external email provider'.
Step 3. Setting up email
Skip this step if you're not using this service for email.
Step 3a. Creating mailboxes
In this system, users and mailboxes are the same thing - one user is one mailbox, and the Email address you use to log in to the system and so on becomes the email address you receive mail on.
So to set up an email mailbox for brett@awesomebusiness.com, we go to Admin->Manage Users and create a user with the user name brett@awesomebusiness.com, then check the box that says "Enable POP Email". This will create a mailbox for brett@awesomebusiness.com.
Step 3b. Creating Aliases
Sometimes you'll want to receive emails on other addresses, but you don't want to create more users. That's what aliases are for - so you can have secondary email addresses like "sales@awesomebusiness.com" or "info@awesomebusiness.com". Enter these in the "Email Aliases" box, separate the aliases by a semicolons .
The Catch-all address check box toggles this mail account to catch everything that's sent to anything at this domain. So if someone misspells your name, like Bertt@awesomebusiness.com, you'll still receive the email.
Step 4. Pointing your Domain to us
Upon purchasing a domain, the registrar will provide you with a user name and password to access their online redelegation tools. Log in to their site and locate the area that enables you to change the DNS settings for your domain. This area usually contains two fields that allow you to enter the Domain Name Server (DNS) information, which controls the routing of your domain to the servers where they are hosted.
Assign the following DNS information, based on your location:
North America sites:
NS03.BUSINESSCATALYST.COM (69.20.239.59) to the primary DNS server
NS01.BUSINESSCATALYST.COM (203.134.157.116) to the secondary DNS server
European sites:
NS03.BUSINESSCATALYST.COM (69.20.239.59) to the primary DNS server
NS01.BUSINESSCATALYST.COM (203.134.157.116) to the secondary DNS server
Asia sites:
NS01.BUSINESSCATALYST.COM (203.134.157.116) to the primary DNS server
NS02.BUSINESSCATALYST.COM (203.134.157.117) to the secondary DNS server.
After submitting this information online, you may need to wait for the changes to propagate before the domain name update become effective. Once the domain name has been redelegated to new name servers, it can take up to a maximum of 7 days for this new domain information to update on all relevant DNS servers throughout the world. Usually, this process happens much faster; often, a visitor that enters your domain will be able to access your hosted site within 24-48 hours.
Note: You must redelegate your domain name using the DNS service provided by Business Catalyst in order to use the system's email service.
If you do not want to redelegate your domain name to Business Catalyst and prefer to use an external DNS service instead, read Using an external DNS service for domain names to learn more about that process.
To review your domain name and check if it has been redelegated properly (and see where it is pointing), you can use an online service such as DNS Stuff. Watch their video tutorial to learn more about interpreting the lookup results.
Step 5. Setting up your Email
Skip this if you are not using this service for email
Firstly you can access your web mail from the web admin interface under Home->Web Mail.
Here's the setting you need to configure your email client to send and receive email, using the same example domain as the above steps - naturally you'll need to replace this with your own Domain Name!
User Information: Use the exact same information you use to log in to the system: Username: myaccount@awesomebusiness.com. This is your FULL email address. Password: Your password to log in to your web admin.
Server Information: POP3 (for receiving mail): mail.awesomebusiness.com SMTP (for sending mail): mail.awesomebusiness.com
Authentication: Your outgoing mail server (SMTP) requires authentication. This is often an extra setting, found in the advanced options or when configuring sending email. Without this set up, you will be able to receive mail, but not send.
This topic is covered in more detail in POP_Email
