DNS setup with Force
If you have purchased a custom domain name through a domain name registrar, you must change the DNS settings to have the domain redirect to your Force.com site.
We recommend purchasing domain names through GoDaddy.com. Be aware that it can take up to 48 hours for changes to DNS settings to take effect.
Your Force.com domain name is used for all the sites you create. For example, your company could have a primary website with other sites dedicated to partners, developers, and support.
If your company’s Force.com domain is mycompany.force.com, these sites could have the following URLs:
- http://mycompany.force.com/
- http://mycompany.force.com/partners
- http://mycompany.force.com/developers
- http://mycompany.force.com/support
After you create your primary site, you can create additional sites the same way, but you are required to enter the second portion of the URL.
Point your custom domain to your Force.com sites
- Register your custom domain through a domain name registrar, such as GoDaddy.com.
- Use domain forwarding (without masking) to redirect your top-level domain name to your www CNAME. For example, mycompany.com would redirect to www.mycompany.com.
- Create individual CNAME records to point your custom domain and subdomains to your Site.com domain. Each record must contain the unique Salesforce Organization ID, in lowercase, for your Salesforce instance. You can find the Organization ID on the Company Information page in Salesforce Setup. For example, if your Organization ID were 00d6000000077ffeai, you would create CNAME records using the following format:
- www.mycompany.com points to www.mycompany.com.00d6000000077ffeai.live.siteforce.com
- partners.mycompany.com points to www.mycompany.com.00d6000000077ffeai.live.siteforce.com
- developers.mycompany.com points to www.mycompany.com.00d6000000077ffeai.live.siteforce.com
- support.mycompany.com points to www.mycompany.com.00d6000000077ffeai.live.siteforce.com
- Wait for the changes from step 3 to take effect before proceeding. It may take some time for the forwarding and CNAME entries to be available for use depending on what the Time To Live setting is for your zone file entries.
- In Salesforce Setup, under Administer, expand Domain Management, and then click Domains.
- Click Add Domain.
- Enter your www domain (i.e. www.mycompany.com) or the subdomain you want to add (i.e. support.mycompany.com), and then click Save. The entry will save if the DNS changes from step 3 are active.
- In Salesforce Setup, under Administration Setup, expand Domain Management, and then click Custom URLs.
- Click New.
- Next to the Domain field, click the search icon, and then select the domain you created in step 7.
- In the Site field, select the site label for the Force.com site that the custom domain will be applied to. For example, if you created the domain www.mycompany.com in step 7 and want to apply it to mycompany.force.com, select the site label for mycompany.force.com (i.e. “My Site,” “My Company,” etc.).
- Enter a forward slash ( / ) in the Path field.
- Click to select Site Primary Custom URL, and then click Save.
It is important for the above steps to be completed in the given sequence for the domain change to take effect.
After these steps are completed, users will be directed to your specified Force.com site when they point their browser to your custom domain (i.e. http://www.mycompany.com). All unsecured page requests will be branded with your custom domain in the address bar instead of the Force.com domain.
Additional information about domain forwarding and Salesforce capabilities
According to Internet Standards RFCs, domains require an A record entry for the root domain. For example:
- mycompany.com A 123.123.123.123
When you enable domain/web forwarding with your domain provider, HTTP requests for the root domain will be forwarded. The A record is automatically created by the domain provider and you cannot change it unless you turn off the domain/web forwarding service.
Also, Salesforce recommends that your www domain (i.e. www.mycompany.com) or a subdomain thereof (i.e. partners.mycompany.com) be forwarded, because the root domain may have MX (mail exchange) records associated. Any modification at the root level domain will turn off mail redirection.