Domain management

The Sitefinity Cloud Domains Management enables you to setup new domains to your Sitefinity Cloud environments and manage their certificates.

NOTE: The process steps described below - adding a domain in Sitefinity Cloud, domain ownership verification, assigning the domain to a Sitefinity site, and pointing the domain to an IP address, must be completed within 2 months time frame. If thе process is only partially completed within this period, the domain ownership verification state changes as a result: from Verified to Pending. 

When you purchase a Sitefinity Cloud subscription, you also purchase a number of production domains. You will get an error, if you try to add more Production domains than your quota allows.

If you want to increase the number of Production domains, you have to purchase a domain add-on.

You can add a www domain as an alias to a Production domain, free of charge. In addition to that, you have the right to add up to three alias domains per Production domain.

NOTE: During a Sitefinity Cloud infrastructure provisioning process, the Sitefinity Cloud engineering team assigns one service domain per environment, using a subdomain of the *.sitefinity.cloud DNS namespace with this naming pattern: [project_name]-[environment_name].sitefinity.cloud. This is a Progress-owned domain name and is only intended for infrastructure setup purposes. Subdomains of the *.sitefinity.cloud DNS namespace will not be verified for additional Staging or Production domains beyond the preconfigured ones. For this purpose, any Sitefinity Cloud customer must use their own domains/subdomains. 

To add a new domain to your license, perform the following:

1. Login to Sitefinity Cloud Management portal.
2. In the left pane, click Domains.
3. Click Add new domain.
   
4. Enter the domain name.
5. Select the Sitefinity environment for which the domain will apply.
   
6. If you select Make this domain alias, you can select an existing production domain, which the current domain will be alias to.
   This means that the production domain and the alias have to belong to the same site.
7. To apply an SSL certificate for the domain, select Request a Certificate and an SSL certificate will be automatically generated by Sitefinity Cloud.
   You can also upload an existing SSL certificate by performing the following:
   1. Select Use an Existing certificate.
      This way, you can add a custom domain in PEM format.
      
   2. In Certificate paragraph box, copy and paste the contents of the entire CERT file, including the BEGIN CERTIFICATE and the END CERTIFICATE lines.
      
   3. In Private Key, copy and paste the contents of the entire private key file, including the BEGIN PRIVATE KEY and the END PRIVATE KEY lines
      
8. Click Add domain.

RESULT: After you add a domain, it is pointed to the selected Sitefinity environment. The domain is automatically added to the Sitefinity license info. This way, there is no trial message when you start using it. It may take several minutes after adding the domain, before the Sitefinity license info is updated.  Next, you must manually verify the domain, assign it to a site, and point it to an IP address.

After you have created a domain in Sitefinity Cloud Management portal, you must verify it through your domain registrar.

To do this, perform the following:

1. In Sitefinity Cloud Management portal, navigate to Domains.
2. Expand More actions menu of the domain that you want to verify.
3. Click View domain details.
4. Under Domain ownership, copy the values of the following fields:
   • Certificate TXT Name
   • Certificate TXT Value
   • Hostname TXT Name
   • Hostname TXT Value
5. Go to the DNS settings of your domain registrar system.
6. Create two new TXT records with the names and values copied in Step 4.

NOTE: The pre-generated values of the verification records in Sitefinity Cloud Management Portal expire in seven days. Afterwards, they are regenerated and you need to use the newly generated values. If you are not creating the verification records directly after creating the domain, make sure you copy the latest values.

RESULT: Your domain is in the process of verification. This is indicated by displaying Pending in the Status column of the domain. After the domain is verified, Domain ownership details will disappear from the domain details and the Status will change to Verified.

After you have added and verified a domain, you must assign it to a site from your Sitefinity CMS multisite instance.

To do this, perform the following:

1. Login to your Sitefinity CMS instance.
   
2. Click the site selector in the upper-left corner of the page.
   
3. Click Manage sites link.
   
4. Click the site that you want to assign to the domain.
   
5. Enter the new domain.
   
6. Save your changes.
   

After you add a new domain, verify it, and assign it to a site, in order for the domain to resolve to your Sitefinity site, you must point the domain in your domain registrar system to a specific IP.

Perform the following:

1. In your Sitefinity Cloud Management Portal, navigate to Domains.
   
2. Expand More actions menu of the domain that you want to verify.
   
3. Click View domain details.
   
4. Under IP address, copy the values of the IP address field.
   
5. Go to the DNS settings of your domain registrar system.
   
6. Create an A record using the value of the IP that you copied.
   

NOTE: The IP may change after a period of time. We recommend that you use the latest value of the IP from the domain details screen, before you point your domain to it. However, domains that have been pointed to an IP will continue working, regardless of whether the IP has changed.

If you are using a custom certificate for your domain, you must upload a new one when the current one nears expiration. You will receive an email before the certificate expires, reminding you that you must renew it.

To upload a new certificate, expand the More actions menu of the domain and click Renew certificate. This will open a dialog where you can upload the new certificate in PEM format.  

To delete a domain, expand the More actions menu of the domain and select Remove domain.

If a domain is the only verified domain for a particular environment, you cannot delete it. To delete it, you must add and verify a new one first.

If a domain has aliases, you must first delete all the aliases, before deleting the domain.

If you want to set up your site locally with a domain different than localhost, for example – local.example.com, and you want to have that domain in the license info, you must add it through the domains management.

When adding the domain, select the External (Non-Production) environment. This way, the domain will not count towards your Production domains quota. If you have set up Sitefinity CMS in an environment outside of Sitefinity Cloud, you can perform the same steps to add a domain for that environment.

After the domain is added, you do not need to verify it. For the Sitefinity instance to update its license info, you must restart it.