{"id":3032,"date":"2023-02-15T19:38:16","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T19:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/obo.zoj.mybluehost.me\/uncategorized\/pointing-subdomains-toward-your-ion-console-part-1\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T13:17:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T13:17:38","slug":"pointing-subdomains-toward-your-ion-console","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/pointing-subdomains-toward-your-ion-console\/","title":{"rendered":"Pointing subdomains toward your Ion Console"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When getting started with Ion, one of the first things you should do is decide what domain you would like to use for your Ion console (thus, the pages that are created in Ion). This will be the main domain that users will see when they view your digital experience. You will either purchase a new domain to use for your Ion platform pages, or you will have a subdomain created based on your company\u2019s primary domain. You can point as many domains and subdomains toward your Ion console as you wish.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When your Ion console is initially set up, it will have a dedicated subdomain such as: http:\/\/yourcompany.postclickmarketing.com<\/li>\n<li>The Ion team will create this URL and provide it to you prior to training. It requires no help from anyone on your team.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can purchase a new domain (URL) or you can set up a subdomain, and point it toward your console&#8217;s dedicated subdomain. You can use whatever subdomain you prefer. One we recommend is: http:\/\/example.yourcompany.com.<\/p>\n<p>In order to use a subdomain, you will need to ask the person\/team who handles\u00a0http:\/\/yourcompany.com\u00a0domain to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Create the subdomain \u201cexample\u201d for http:\/\/yourcompany.com (http:\/\/example.yourcompany.com) and a CNAME record to point the DNS toward your console&#8217;s dedicated <em>postclickmarketing<\/em> subdomain (yourcompany.postclickmarketing.com).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"hs-callout-type-note\" data-hs-callout-type=\"note\">\n<p>http:\/\/yourcompany.com and http:\/\/example.yourcompany.com are meant for example purposes. Any domain or subdomain can be pointed toward your Ion Console&#8217;s dedicated <em>postclickmarketing<\/em> subdomain for use with your Ion pages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"hs-callout-type-warning\" data-hs-callout-type=\"warning\">\n<p>When creating the CNAME record, you cannot include http:\/\/ with your <em>postclickmarketing<\/em> subdomain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"hs-callout-type-caution\" data-hs-callout-type=\"caution\">\n<p>We do not support the use of A records.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"hs-callout-type-caution\" data-hs-callout-type=\"caution\">\n<p>Root domains require a special setup as many domain hosts do not support the use of CNAME records. In this situation, you will want to utilize URL forwarding from the root domain to another entry within that domain. One common way this can be handled is by applying a CNAME record to the www entry for your domain and then set up URL forwarding from the root domain to the www version. You could then add the www version to your Ion console and use it to create URLs. Any visitor to the root domain version of that URL will then be forwarded to the www version in Ion. If you are unsure how to set up URL forwarding within your DNS, please contact your DNS vendor for guidance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Setting up the subdomain and pointing it toward your console&#8217;s dedicated <em>postclickmarketing <\/em>subdomain we provide to you is very straightforward and it is the preferred option for most customers driving traffic to Ion pages from direct mail, intra-site and search engine marketing. Google pay-per-click campaigns will require your display domain to match the destination domain, so this option is mandatory for digital experiences you create for your search engine marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>You can point as many subdomains and domains toward your Ion console as you wish. Once they are pointed to Ion you will set them up in Ion in the Domain Manager under &#8220;<em>Settings<\/em>&#8220;. Your subdomain\/domain will \u00a0not work unless you set them up in your Domain Manager in the Ion console, so don&#8217;t forget this important step.<\/p>\n<h1>The Domain Manager<\/h1>\n<p>You can point one or more domains or subdomains to \u00a0your ion console by following the steps below:<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Let\u2019s Get Started!<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li>Click the settings tab in the lower left-hand corner of your your Ion console and then click \u201cDomains\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Click the green \u201cNew domain\u201d button<\/li>\n<li>Give your domain a unique name in the \u201cDomain name\u201d text field\n<ul>\n<li>i.e. \u201cexample.yourcompany.com\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Designate this domain as the default domain (optional)\n<ul>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0if this (sub)domain is set as the default, it will be the default (sub)domain when a traffic source is opened (it can always be changed as you are creating traffic sources).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>HTTPS Support\n<ul>\n<li>These options will designate whether or not your domain or subdomain will require a certificate that ensures secure transactions between web servers and browsers. When a (sub)domain is secured, URLs using that (sub)domain will use \u201chttps\u201d instead of \u201chttp\u201d on associated pages and indicate to visitors that it is a secure website with a lock icon\n<ul>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0the location of the lock icon varies between browsers. \u00a0In Internet Explorer, it appears in the bottom-right corner of the browser window.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Free certificate<\/strong>\u00a0option uses LetsEncrypt to secure (sub)domain<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use your own<\/strong>\u00a0option can be selected if your team provides us with a security certificate to install.\u00a0<em>If you would like to use your own security certificate, please contact your customer success manager to discuss next steps.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Designate a redirect URL that you want to send people to when they don\u2019t provide a complete URL matching a specific traffic source. \u00a0This is to ensure respondents who come to a bad URL are redirected properly.\n<ul>\n<li>This might happen if respondent just types in the root domain, such as\u00a0http:\/\/example.yourcompany.com\u00a0without a specific friendly \u201cslash name\u201d address or a \/Casting.aspx automatic address to identify a particular traffic source<\/li>\n<li>This might also occur if respondent uses a URL that does not exist (i.e.\u00a0http:\/\/example.yourcompany.com\/badguess)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>You have options for how respondents are sent to the redirect URL\n<ul>\n<li>Go to the redirect URL \u201cas is\u201d: respondent will be sent to the redirect URL and treated as an organic, unique visitor to the redirect URL<\/li>\n<li>Append path and query string: respondent will be sent to the redirect URL with their originally intended path and query string information appended to the URL for data\/metric tracking purposes.<\/li>\n<li>Append the query string: respondent will be sent to the redirect URL with their originally intended query string information appended to the URL for data\/metric tracking purposes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Select one of the following redirect types\n<ul>\n<li>302 redirects inform respondents and search engines that the redirect is temporary<\/li>\n<li>301 redirects will indicate to respondents and search engines that the URL has been changed permanently<\/li>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0For most redirects, you will want to select a 302 redirect. \u00a0If you are unsure of which redirect to select, check with your SEO manager.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Select whether or not you would like this domain to include auto-generated sitemap.xml in robots.txt\n<ul>\n<li>Opting into this feature would automatically inform search engines that this domain or subdomain is available for crawling and will also automatically update additional information about each URL (i.e. when it was last updated)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Enter any custom robots.txt you want to exclude into the associated text box\n<ul>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0Web Robots (aka \u201cWeb Wanderers, Crawlers, or Spiders) are programs that automatically search the web to index content. \u00a0These may be search engines, such as Google, as well as spammers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0By default, your console will allow all robots.txt<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Upload a favicon\n<ul>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0A favicon is a graphic that appears in the left side of the address bar when viewing your ion experience<\/li>\n<li><strong>*Note:<\/strong>\u00a0Must be an .ico file of either 16x16px or 32x32px<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Click Save<\/li>\n<li>Add as many other (sub)domains you would like to have pointed toward your Ion console<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>You can now create a URL with your subdomain and visit it to confirm that everything is functioning as desired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When getting started with Ion, one of the first things you should do is decide what domain you would like to use for your Ion console (thus, the pages that are created in Ion). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":5953,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2064,4],"tags":[2204,2205,2169],"class_list":["post-3032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ion-platform-en","category-the-platform","tag-console","tag-domains","tag-settings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3032"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7211,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions\/7211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioninteractive.com\/ionacademy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}