Your own domain

Your ticket shop works straight away on the platform's address. Fine to start with. But you can also have it run on an address of your own: tickets.yourassociation.com.

That makes a difference to trust. A visitor about to type in their card details looks at the address bar, and there your name is. It also looks better in a leaflet or on a poster.

This article first explains what a domain, a subdomain and DNS are, then how you set it up, and finally what you do at the five registrars Flemish associations use most often. Allow half an hour of work and up to a day of waiting.

The words, in plain language

Domain name

A domain name is the name you rent on the internet: yourassociation.com. You rent it by the year from a company, and as long as you pay, it is yours and nobody else's.

Subdomain

A subdomain is a piece you stick on the front of your own domain name: tickets.yourassociation.com, or shop.yourassociation.com, or members.yourassociation.com.

You create them yourself, as many as you like, and they cost nothing extra. That is the whole point: your website stays where it is, and you put your ticket shop in a room of its own in the same house.

DNS

DNS is the telephone directory of the internet.

Computers do not work with names but with numbers (ip addresses). If somebody types in tickets.yourassociation.com, their computer first has to ask: "which number belongs to that?" That question goes to DNS, and DNS answers.

In that directory there is a page with lines on it for your domain. Every line is called a record and has three parts: a name, a type and a value. You may write on that page, because it is your domain.

CNAME record

A CNAME record is a forwarding. "Anyone looking for tickets.yourassociation.com should look further at this other address."

Compare it with a note on the door of a company that has moved: we are over there now. Your name stays on the note; the visit goes to us.

One limitation that comes from the technology itself and that you meet at every registrar: a CNAME cannot go on your main domain. So you can forward tickets.yourassociation.com, but not yourassociation.com itself. That is also precisely why you take a subdomain.

TXT record

A TXT record is a line with plain text in it. It forwards nothing; it is a note anybody may read.

We use it as proof of ownership. You get a long, unique code from us and you put it into a TXT record on your domain. Only somebody who may write on that page can manage that — and that is precisely what we want to know.

Without that check somebody else could aim their DNS at us and run your shop under their name. On a page where people enter their card, that is not a theoretical risk.

Registrar

Your registrar is the company you rent your domain name from: Combell, Vimexx, one.com, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, or another. That is also the place where you write in that directory.

Do you no longer know who your domain is with? Three ways of finding out:

1. Search your mailbox for your domain name. A registrar sends an invoice and an expiry reminder every year.
2. Ask whoever made your website. At many associations the domain is in the name of the web builder or of a former committee member.
3. Search online for "whois" with your domain name. For .be DNS Belgium does that themselves; you then see at least the name of the registrar, even though the personal details are shielded.

If you really cannot find it again, stop here. Without access to your DNS you cannot take these steps, and that is no disgrace — your shop simply carries on working on the platform address.

What you need beforehand

• The Owner role: only that role may get at your organisation's settings.
• A domain name that belongs to your association, and the sign-in account at your registrar. The password, not "somebody who may have it".
• A subdomain that is still free. tickets is the custom; shop, kaarten or signup works too.
• Half an hour of work, and patience after that: allow an hour for it to be known everywhere, and in the worst case up to 24 hours.

Step 1 — Register your domain

1. Go to Settings → Organisation.
2. Scroll to the Own domain block.
3. In the field, type your complete subdomain, tickets.yourassociation.com for instance. Without https://, without a slash after it; if you do type those, we take them off ourselves.
4. Click Add domain.

You get the message The domain is ready and it appears in the list with the Pending label. If you get Enter a valid hostname, check that you have not copied along a space or some other odd character.

If you get This domain is already in use, this hostname is already with another organisation. Choose a different subdomain, or get in touch if you are sure that it is yours.

Step 2 — Note down the TXT record

Next to your new domain there is now a little block Set this TXT record at your dns provider and then click Check, with three lines. That is the record you are going to set shortly:

What it says	What it is
Name	Something like _merk-verificatie.tickets.yourassociation.com
Type	TXT
Value	A long series of letters and figures

The first part of that name is derived from the name of the platform, so yours will say something other than merk. Copy the three lines exactly as they are on your screen. Select the value, copy it with Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on a Mac) and do not type it out: one wrong character and the check fails without your seeing why.

Note: that name begins with an underscore. That is not a typing error. Records beginning with a _ are agreements between machines; you see the same thing with _dmarc for email.

Step 3 — Set the record at your registrar

Here you leave your back office for a moment. What follows happens in your registrar's panel.

The rule that applies everywhere

Almost every panel wants the name without your domain name after it. If your screen says _merk-verificatie.tickets.yourassociation.com and you manage the yourassociation.com zone, you fill in only _merk-verificatie.tickets. The panel sticks your domain name on the end itself.

How do you know whether you did it right? After saving, look at what appears in the list. It should say exactly what was on your screen. If it says _merk-verificatie.tickets.yourassociation.com.yourassociation.com, you have filled in too much: take your domain name off again.

Note: registrars' screens change regularly. If you cannot find a menu as it is described here, search in their own help for "DNS management" or "DNS records". That search term always gets you there, at every party.

Combell

1. Sign in and go to Mijn producten → DNS & forwarding beheer (My products → DNS & forwarding management).
2. To the right of your domain name, click the Beheer DNS button (in some screens that button is still called DNS & forwarding).
3. In the menu on the left choose TXT-records and click Toevoegen (Add).
4. Fill in the name and the value and save.
5. Then go to CNAME-records in that same menu and add the CNAME for the tickets subdomain.

Combell themselves reckon on one to four hours for a change to take effect.

Vimexx

1. Sign in to your customer panel and go to Mijn Domeinen (My Domains).
2. Click your domain name on the left.
3. Choose DNS to get at the records, and add them there.

Note, this is the pitfall at Vimexx: if your domain hangs on web hosting that you also take from Vimexx, you must not set the records here but in DirectAdmin, under Your Account → DNS Management. If you do it in the customer panel anyway, your website stops working and visitors get a parked page. Vimexx say so themselves in their manual.

In DirectAdmin there is no edit: if you want to adjust a record, you delete it and create it again. And watch out for the trailing dot on a CNAME value: if you leave it off, DirectAdmin sticks your own domain name on the end once more.

one.com

1. Sign in to the control panel.
2. Under Advanced settings click DNS settings.
3. Go to DNS records.
4. Under create new record choose the TXT type, fill in the hostname field and the value, and click Create record.
5. Repeat for CNAME.

Leave the TTL field empty if you do not know it; one.com then uses 3600 seconds, and that is fine. one.com are renewing their panel, so the names may be slightly different for you.

GoDaddy

1. Sign in and go to your Domain Portfolio.
2. Click your domain name to get to Domain Settings.
3. Click DNS to see your records.
4. Click Add New Record, choose the TXT type under Type, fill in Name and Value and click Save.
5. Repeat with Type CNAME.

GoDaddy say most clearly of all what belongs in Name: the hostname without your domain name after it. Dots in that name are allowed, so _merk-verificatie.tickets is a valid entry.

If Domain Protection is switched on for your domain, GoDaddy asks for an extra confirmation code when saving. Keep your phone to hand.

GoDaddy put it at an hour for most changes, and up to 48 hours for it to be known worldwide.

Cloudflare

1. Sign in, choose your account and click your domain.
2. Go to DNS → Records.
3. Click Add record, choose the type, fill in the fields and click Save.

Switch the orange cloud OFF on the CNAME. That cloud is called Proxy status; click it until it says DNS only and it turns grey.

Why that has to be: if the cloud is orange, all the traffic goes through Cloudflare first, and Cloudflare then handles the secure connection itself. Two parties both wanting to arrange the certificate produce not a secure site but error messages and endless redirects. Cloudflare say it in their own documentation in so many words: if your record points at a platform that arranges its own certificate, set the record to DNS only. The same applies to records with which a service checks your ownership.

Two things that help you with that:

• A TXT record has no cloud at all. Cloudflare only lets A, AAAA and CNAME records run through their network. So do not look for a button that is not there.
• If CNAME flattening is switched on somewhere in your zone settings for all records, your CNAME can still be answered wrongly, even with a grey cloud. Switch that off for this record to work.

A different registrar

The action is the same everywhere: find DNS, add a record, choose the type, fill in the name and value, save. If you cannot find it, search their help for "add DNS records". If you cannot work it out, ask their support with this sentence: "I want to add a TXT record and a CNAME record on a subdomain. Where do I do that?" Any helpdesk can work with that.

Step 4 — The CNAME record

The TXT record proves that the domain is yours. The CNAME record actually sends the traffic our way. You need both: a TXT on its own gives you a verified domain that leads nowhere, a CNAME on its own gives you traffic we are not allowed to answer.

• Name: your subdomain, so tickets.
• Type: CNAME.
• Value: the address of Passavo your subdomain points at. That value is not shown on the screen: ask support for it before you go any further, and mention your subdomain. Never fill in an address you have read somewhere else.

Step 5 — Checking

Back to Settings → Organisation, the Own domain block. Click Check next to your domain.

What you get	What it means
The domain has been verified	Done. The status jumps to Active and the little block with the TXT record disappears; in its place you see Verified on with the date
The TXT record has not been found yet	Not found yet. The status goes to Verifying

Should you ever see Failed, the code to check against is missing. Delete the domain and register it again.

That second message is not an error message. DNS needs time to spread across the world; a red cross five minutes after setting a record would be a false alarm. Set an alarm for an hour's time and try again. If it takes longer, read on under What if ….

As soon as the domain is set to Active and your CNAME record is in place too, your shop is reachable at your own address. The certificate — that is what produces the padlock in the address bar and the s in https — is requested automatically. You do not have to order, pay for or install anything for it. It may still take a few minutes before it is ready; until then your browser may complain about the security.

Your old address on the platform simply keeps working. So shared links and printed QR codes from before stay valid.

Common mistakes

Filling in your domain name twice. The most common mistake of all. You paste the complete name into a field that adds your domain itself. Check what is in the list after saving.

Forgetting the CNAME. You are satisfied because the check succeeded, but your address leads nowhere. You need both records.

Trying to use your main domain. yourassociation.com itself cannot take a CNAME, and besides, you would be diverting your existing website with it. Take a subdomain.

Leaving the cloud orange at Cloudflare. You then get an error message about the security instead of your shop. Set it to DNS only.

Concluding after five minutes that it does not work. Give it an hour. And then another hour.

What if …

What if the record is there but the check keeps failing?

Work through these five, in this order:

1. Look at the name in your registrar panel. Is your domain name in it twice? That is the mistake in four out of five cases.
2. Look at the value. Have quotation marks, spaces or a broken line crept in? Paste it again, straight from your back office.
3. Check whether you have edited the right zone. Many associations have their domain with one party and their hosting with another. Whoever manages the DNS is the one you need — see the Vimexx warning above.
4. Wait longer. Up to an hour is normal, up to 24 hours happens, and at some registrars (GoDaddy themselves say 48 hours) it takes even longer worldwide.
5. Check whether you have not accidentally got a second, old record with the same name. Delete it.

If it is still failing after a day, get in touch with support and say which registrar you use and exactly which name you filled in.

What if I already have a website on that same domain?

Then nothing changes about that website, as long as you use a subdomain.

That is exactly why we ask for a subdomain and not your main domain. yourassociation.com keeps pointing at your website; only the line for tickets.yourassociation.com points at us. You are adding a new line, not changing one.

If you were to send your main domain here, your ticket shop would replace your website. Almost nobody wants that, and it is technically impossible with a CNAME anyway.

What if I want to go back later?

Then you click Delete next to your domain and confirm. Your shop stays reachable at the usual platform address — that was never away.

Afterwards, clear up the two records at your registrar, otherwise your subdomain points at an address you no longer use. Visitors with an old link then get an error message instead of nothing.

What if the shop works but my browser warns about the security?

Then the certificate is still on its way or has just been renewed. Wait a quarter of an hour and try again, preferably in a private window so that your browser does not take anything from its memory. If it is still warning after an hour, check at Cloudflare whether the cloud really is grey.

What if my domain is with my web builder and they do not respond?

Ask them in writing to add two records and send the name, the type and the value along — it is then five minutes' work for them. If they do not respond, you can apply at your registrar for the domain to be transferred to your own account. That is a process in itself; do not start on it just before a ticket sale.

Frequently asked questions

Does an own domain cost extra? Not with us. You only pay for your domain name at your registrar, and you usually have that already. An extra subdomain costs nothing.

Can I register several domains? Yes. They sit below one another in the Own domain block and they all work. Handy when you have a French-language and a Dutch-language name.

Does my old link keep working? Yes. The address on the platform stays alongside your own domain. Not a single printed QR code becomes invalid through this step.

Do I have to do anything when my certificate expires? No. It is renewed automatically as long as your DNS keeps pointing at us. If you take the records away, that stops too — which is then the intention.

How do I know whether my domain is with one of these five? Search your mailbox for your domain name, or do a whois lookup. If your registrar is not in the list above, use the general approach: search their help for "DNS records".