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.
So what on earth is DNS? Ugh, acronyms suck huh? It stands for Domain Name Service - DNS. To understand DNS, you have to understand that a computer has noooooo idea what you're talking about when you say "hey there computer, show me Google.com". BUT if you were to say "hey computer, show me 64.233.187.99" the computer would happily go and fetch Google.com for you.
Go on, type http://64.233.187.99/ into the address bar. Voila! It's Google! What a great party trick! No need to thank me when you're getting all the ooohs and ahhhs from your friends because you can speak computer.
Anyway some clever boffins created DNS so that you CAN ask your computer to look up Google.com, and it will find you 64.233.187.99. That's right - DNS translates domain names that people understand into IP addresses that computers understand.
DNS is a marvellous invention, because it means that if you want to visit a website or chat to someone online, you don't need to remember the IP address. Just remember Google.com and you're set to go.
One more thing: one phrase we're going to use quite often is "somesuch-domain points to so-and-so IP address." This is just saying that your computers will associate some domain name to some IP address - for example "Google.com points to 64.233.187.99". Got it? Great. Moving on...
Some advanced terminology. You can skip this for now if you're in a rush. Just remember this section is here if you find some weird terminology that you don't get.
As if my little party trick wasn't enough, there's even more wonderful geek lore to impart on your unsuspecting party-going friends.
So we know that a Domain is your human readable name like "google.com" or "mycompany.com".
A Subdomain is a subsection of your domain name that you can point to a different IP address if you like. Believe it or not, the famous "www" is actually a subdomain - www.google.com is a subdomain of the domain google.com. news.google.com is a subdomain of google.com too.
A DNS A-Record is a record inside a DNS server that links a Domain Name to an IP address. It's a big part of what makes DNS actually work. For example, the A-Record for google.com might look like this: google.com = 64.233.187.99
A C-Name is like an AKA (also-known-as, we love acronyms hooray) for your A-Record. So a C-Name allows you to point a different domain name or a sub domain to the same IP address as your A-Record. Often, www.somesillydomain.com is set up as a C-Name for somesillydomain.com.
You'd say it out-loud like this: "somesillydomain.com, AKA www.somesilly.com". So you can imagine A C-Name would look like this:
www.google.com = google.com.
This is helpful because if google.com changes their IP Address later, you won't need to update all the other C-Names to reflect the change.
A Name Server is a computer that does a DNS "lookup", which is basically translating a domain name to an IP address. Name Servers are our friends - they make DNS work.
A (Domain Name) Registrar is a place that gives out Domain Names.
An NS-Record is a Name Server Record. Name Server records are really important because they're the ones that tell the computers where to look for all the A-Records and C-Names - they point to a Name Server that's responsible for a domain. For example, google.com has one of their Name Servers at ns1.google.com. ns1.google.com stores all the A-Records and C-Names for google.com.
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.
Step 2a. Add your Domain to the system
Now lets add your domain to the system - this is done in Admin->Manage Domain Names. For the sake of example, let's pretend your domain is awesomebusiness.com.
Step 2b. Adding your domain and choosing your DNS configuration
Enter your domain name in the top box. Now choose if you'd like us to manage your DNS - that means your DNS details, A-Records and C-Names, will live on our servers. This is the default option, and for most businesses it's the right choice. If you're a more advanced user and you'd like to host your DNS elsewhere, you can. Simply choose the second option. we'll talk more about that later.
Step 2c. Email settings for your Domain
Now, what about email addresses for awesomebusiness.com? Most customers use us for their email, so 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, you can. Simply choose the second option again, and enter in your mail server's domain name. If you'd like, you can enter in an IP address for the mail server too. You'll need to provide an IP address if you have mail.awesomebusiness.com set up on another server, but we're managing the DNS entries. If we're not managing the DNS, you don't need an IP address there at all, simply enter your mail server's Domain Name.
Now click save, and we're done with this part.
Step 3. Setting up email
Skip this step if you're not using this service for email. <em>
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, create a user (or change our existing username) 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
Now that the system is primed and ready for you to make the switch to us, you need to log in to your domain registrar and re-delegate your domain to us.
This is a matter of setting the Name Servers for your domain to point to our Names Servers. Our Name Servers are:
- ns01.businesscatalyst.com
- ns02.businesscatalyst.com
Note - If you are not using this service for DNS, skip this Step. You will need to set up your External DNS Settings as specified here - [1]
Step 5. Wait a little bit
DNS changes sometimes takes a little while to "propagate". That means that you might not see the changes immediately, but they will happen. Usually it's quick, but it can take a few hours before the changes take effect.
Step 6. Setting up your Email
<em> 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
Advanced - Using an External DNS Service
While our DNS service is fine for most businesses, it also offers a simplified view of DNS that suits small business owners. If you want advanced, granular control over your DNS settings, you're best to use an external DNS service.
Note that if you want to use our email service, you cannot use an external DNS service.
To set this up, you follow the steps above except for step 4. Instead, you log in to your DNS Service and create an A-Record that points to the relevant IP Address depending on the data centre your site is hosted on.
If you don't have a log in or aren't using a self-managed service, you can simply email your Registrar and ask them to do this.
