Domain name management

When you open a Wild Apricot 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 at any time. 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 nycs.net and have your Wild Apricot website at www.nycs.net.

From Domain name management ( Settings > Domain Name Management  ) you can control these settings.

Customize Wild Apricot Domain Address

The first time you get to this page it will have only one record - your initial free domain:

You can freely edit the first part of this free website address and select one of our subdomains by clicking on Change link:

Add Your Custom Domain

To add your custom domain (which you already own), click on [Add custom domain] button:

By default, if you add a domain like abc.org, we will automatically add both www.abc.org and abc.org, because normally you would want people to be able to access your website either way. If you do not want this, delete one of these domains via Remove link.

It is not enough to add it on this page, for your domain to work you have to make the appropriate changes via your domain registrar - See Custom domain setup

You can have many domains setup for your website at the same time - one free domain is always provided by Wild Apricot and any number of custom domains you have purchased. One of these domains has to be assigned as the primary one - it is used in all email notifications etc. You can change your primary domain by clicking on the 'Set as primary' link for a particular domain:

Check your Domain name settings

There are some features that allow you to troubleshoot your domain name configuration.

After adding your domain, there is a Check... button next to the each name that your have configured. Clicking on the button will bring up a pop-up window that tells you if the configuration is:

• Correct - your domain name should work perfectly.
• Incomplete Your CNAME/A-record was configured properly and the domain will point to your site. But SPF or TXT record is not correct.
  Note, in this case all emails sent from your account will still use default Wild Apricot FROM email address (e.g. nycs@memberlodge.org) which is based on your default Wild Apricot domain name URL.
  You will also see this notice in Settings > Organization details > E-mail settings

• Invalid - Your CNAME/A-record is incorrectly configured - the domain will not work with your site.

Sites that are Correct or Incomplete can be set as your primary domain name.

If one of your TXT (or SPF) records is incorrect or missing the status of your custom domain will remain as "Incomplete" and all emails from your account will be sent based on your default Wild Apricot email address. In order to send your emails based on your own custom domain name you must setup TXT (or SPF) record as indicated in Custom domain setup help page.

To fix the problem, you will have to go to your domain name registrar's site and re-check and modify your settings. Once you do you can Recheck... them on your site later. NOTE These changes can take 24 to 72 hours to take effect, so you may want to wait a while after setting up/changing your settings before rechecking.

Further information on fixing issues with your Domain name can be found here - Custom domain setup troubleshooting