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How do I point my own domain to ShopFactory hosted pages? - Knowledgebase / Publishing your website - ShopFactory Help Center

How do I point my own domain to ShopFactory hosted pages?

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Your paid Total Care service includes free 'basic hosting' account. Your hosting base name format will be <shopname>.shopfactory.com

For example,http://merliza.shopfactory.com

ShopFactory Hosting details:

Remote Host: webhost.shopfactory.com

Protocol: File Transfer Protocol

Encryption: Require explicit FTP over TLS

Username: <your ShopFactory username>

Password: <provided during account signup>

Base Directory: /public_html/

Publish URL:<enter your own domain here or your ShopFactory hosting base name>

"Passive" checkbox must be ticked.

Adding your own domain to your ShopFactory Hosting Account: (if you have purchased & registered your own domain)

- Open your shop in ShopFactory -> at the left-tree menu, click on ShopFactory Central page -> click "Edit Total Care hosting details" -> enter your domain -> Add Domain

- Make sure you have already uploaded your shop to your ShopFactory hosting account (Publish -> Publish website on the net)

If you have purchased your own domain and would want your visitors to use this domain to access your website, they will be redirected to the ShopFactory hosted pages behind the scene. 

There are several ways to achieve this. Please refer to the options listed below:

1. I want to use our own DNS service so emails continue to work but want to also use ShopFactory hosting account

Then you can simply setup CNAME on your own DNS server. Your IT guy should be able to take care of this.

- Setup CNAME on your DNS server, i.e. www.myshop.com -> myshop.shopfactory.com

2.DNS delegation – "point" my domain name to my ShopFactory hosting account

When you register a domain name, it needs to be "pointed" to your hosting account. This is known as domain delegation. As an example, anyone going tohttp://sftest.com.au/will actually see the pages inhttp://testing.shopfactory.com/

If you want to use our DNS service, please login to your Domain account control panel and enter our DNS addresses (name servers):

Primary: ns1.shopfactory.com
Secondary: ns2.shopfactory.com

Alternatively, you can use these name servers: ns1.santu.com and ns2.santu.com

If you do not know how to do this, please contact the company where you bought the domain and ask them how to update your name servers. (Most domain registrars provide a user control panel so you can do this yourself.)

- Remove your domain registrar's current name servers and replace them with the ShopFactory nameservers

Note: After updating your nameserver details, it can take up to 24 hours for the new information to propagate throughout the Internet. This means that depending on your location, you may not be able to access the pages hosted in ShopFactory via your domain name until that time. The propagation process is something that is outside our control - it's just the way the Internet works.

What will happen is, you publish shop-files to http://<shopname> .shopfactory.com and anyone going to http://www.owndomain.com will be pointed to the pages in http://<shopname>.shopfactory.com.

Thus, you can advertise your shop URL as http://www.owndomain.com and when this is accessed, it actually calls the pages in http://<shopname>.shopfactory.com

Note: ShopFactory's basic hosting service does not include email service. If your email service is with the same domain provider, please ensure you contact ShopFactory Support and provide your MX Records (or A records or CNAME) to keep it running and active. ShopFactory needs to add it in your hosting account

What if I want to use ShopFactory’s DNS service but still want to maintain our own mail exchange server?

If this is the case then your MX records, A records, CNAME will need to be setup on our side – you need to contact ShopFactory Supportathttp://support.shopfactory.com/and we will add these records to your SF Hosting account. Please quote your ShopFactory username when contacting our Support Team and provide your MX records, A records, and/or CNAME details.

3. Or you can use a simple redirect( this is not ideal because visitors see your ShopFactory hosting base name asmyshop.shopfactory.com)