Using Custom Domains for your Community

Is it possible to create a custom URL that removes the ".ideascale.com" from the community URL?

Yes. IdeaScale customers at the Annual or Enterprise license levels can set a custom domain for their IdeaScale communities. In order to get the custom domain option to work correctly YOU WILL NEED TO ADD/MODIFY your domain's DNS settings. If you are not aware of what DNS is or if you do not have access to update your DNS records, you cannot use the Custom URL domain option. Please contact your internal IT staff or your system administrator for more information. IdeaScale Technical Support cannot help you setup DNS for your domain.

• Add a CNAME DNS Record to your existing domain - Eg. ideas.mycompany.com and point it to app.ideascale.net

• URL: ideas.mycompany.com

• CNAME: app.ideascale.net

Note: DO NOT ADD an A-Record, You must use a CNAME Record Type

• After adding the CNAME DNS Record, make sure that the IP Address resolves to the same IP address as app.ideascale.net - You can try ping ideas.mycompany.com to make sure that the address resolution is working correctly. If you did step one correctly, ping ideas.mycompany.com should resolve to one of our server cluster IP addresses.

• After setting up CNAME you need to set Custom Domain name from Community Settings >> Global >> Custom Domain

Update: IdeaScale will be migrating away from app.verticalpanel.com for CNAME entries. Please update your CNAME entry to the new entry, app.ideascale.net as soon as possible so as not to experience outages with your system.

Can I configure a custom domain with IdeaScale without using "WWW" at the beginning of the community URL?

Yes, you simply need to redirect http://mycompany.com >> http://www.mycompany.com.

** Please note: When DNS records have been changed it takes about 24 hours for the changes to propagate and take effect. Only after that you will be able to see the result of the DNS changes you have made.

• **Note: Only Enterprise license holders using custom domains may configure communities to use SSL. You will need to provide IdeaScale with your wildcard SSL certificate, and you must have control of your DNS settings to be able to create a CNAME (i.e., subdomain) record.
  Contact IdeaScale's sales department for more information.
  http://ideascale.com/contact/ **