Custom domain setup

When you open a new account, your initial Wild Apricot website address is provided for free within one of our own domains. It is generated automatically based on the organization name you have entered when you opened a trial account, but you can change it any time via Domain management

You might already have your own domain and if you have a billable Wild Apricot account (but not a free one), you can set it up to use with Wild Apricot. For example, instead of using a free Wild Apricot address like nycs.memberlodge.org you can buy a domain such as nycs.net and have your Wild Apricot website at www.nycs.net.

What you need to do is to change your domain DNS settings in your domain host so that your web address www.yourdomain.org (and, if desired, yourdomain.org - without www) points to Wild Apricot's server. (The domain remains in your full control and you can always change it back whenever necessary).

Here is how to go about adding and using your custom domain:
1) Add custom domain via Domain management

2) Change domain settings for your domain (see example below)

Note:

Be careful regarding your email. Wild Apricot does not provide email hosting so if you are using this domain for email, you have to set it up so that web traffic is sent to our servers while email traffic is sent to your email hosting company. (By the way, you can use free email hosting, for example from Google - see Email setup and WildApricot)

3) Make sure that your domain is now properly pointing to your Wild Apricot site. Specifically check the following:

it should NOT setup as a redirect, meaning that when you type the domain in the browser, it displays your Wild Apricot website and the URL in the browser is still your own domain
When you click on any page in your Wild Apricot website menu, URL displayed in the browser will be your own domain plus the path to a specific Wild Apricot page.

4) Once everything works, go into Domain management again and set your custom domain as 'Primary' - meaning that it will be used for email links

Note:

Your free Wild Apricot-provided domain like NYCS.memberlodge.org will still work to reach your website - as a backup option.
You can setup several custom domains, for example NYCS.info, NYCS.net and NYCS.com. One of the domains will be selected as primary.

Setup of your domain depends on DNS setup functionality provided by your domain registrar (or external DNS host). Generally speaking, the best way to set it up is to setup a canonical name (CNAME) www for your DNS servers which points to sites.memberlodge.org. (Read more about canonical names: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CNAME.html).
For example:

www CNAME sites.memberlodge.org

If you want to point not only your www.yourdomain.org but also your main domain yourdomain.org, you have to setup A-record for yourdomain.org to point to our server IP address 206.196.16.30 .
For example:

yourdomain.org A 206.196.16.30

Sender Policy Framework setup

We also highly recommend to create an SPF record for your domain to specify that Wild Apricot servers are allowed to send emails on your behalf. Read more about Sender Policy Framework or About SPF on WikiPedia . Otherwise there is a chance that some spam blockers will filter our emails sent from Wild Apricot on your behalf. If your domain does not yet have an SPF record, DNS should be modified to include a TXT-record like this:
"v=spf1 mx include:memberlodge.org ~all"
If you already have an SPF record, add this: include:memberlodge.org before the word 'all'

Below we describe how it is done with one of the most popular and professional domain registrar companies - GoDaddy.com. The process is similar for all other professional domain registrars.

Godaddy Setup example

Log in to your GoDaddy account at www.godaddy.com.
Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names.
Click the domain that you'd like to use with WildApricot site.
Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records.
Look for the www alias. Most probably, it will be in the section CNAMES (Aliases) and setup to point to @. Click on the pencil icon to edit this setting. If there is no such record setup yet, click Add New CNAME Record instead.
Enter in the field Points To Host Name : sites.memberlodge.org (without dot at the end)
click Ok

It is quite common to setup your site so that both www.mydomain.ext and simply mydomainname.ext go to the same place. Here is how to do it:

Go to Total DNS Control And MX Records
Find @ in the section A (Host). Click on the pencil icon to edit this setting.
Enter in the field Points To Ip Address : 206.196.16.30
click Ok

To setup an SPF record:

Go to Total DNS Control And MX Records
In the TXT (Text) section, find the line which starts with your domain name. If the section is empty, click [Add new TXT Record].
Specify TXT Name: <mydomain.ext.> (without www); TXT Value: "v=spf1 mx include:memberlodge.org ~all"

DNS Servers

We do not provide DNS servers ourselves since most domain registrars already provide this service at no charge for every domain (e.g. godaddy.com registrar in our example).
However if you have registered your domain through one of small reseller domain registrars you might not have direct access to your DNS settings, just the ability to change your DNS servers.
Here are your options in this case:
1) Contact your domain registrar and ask if they can set it up manually for you - use their domain servers to point your domain to our server (via CNAME or IP address). This is the best option as many domain registrars can do this even if they do not provide web-based self-service interface for you to do it. The biggest challenge is to get hold of a knowledgeable service rep at the domain registrar - since this is a relatively rare situation, many service reps will have hard time understanding what you need them to do.

2) Contact your hosting company (the one whose DNS servers you currently use) and ask them to change their name server settings to point website to us. Whether they would do it or not - and what would they charge - depends on a particular hosting company. This is the option to follow if you will still use the hosting company for email hosting.

3) Transfer your domain to another registrar which provides DNS servers and online access to their settings. This takes a few days and incurs a one-time charge (depends on each registrar).

Email hosting note:

Be careful regarding your email. We do not provide email hosting with Wild Apricot account (we think it is better left to experts!) so make sure not to change the email settings for your domain. Your email should work in exactly the same way it worked before you make the website domain change above.

Miscellaneous notes

Important notes:

Once you make this change, it might take up to 48 hours for DNS records on Internet to pick it up (though usually it happens much faster)
One common mistake is when domain is 'forwarded' - instead of properly setting it up as described above. Please point whomever makes this setting to this page to make sure they do it the right way.