Setting up a CNAME record

Setting up a CNAME record allows you to create links that looks like your charity domain name instead of using a GiveEasy URL.

For example, instead of sending the following link to a donor:

- https://mycharity.giveeasy.org/GivingDay

You can send the following link once your CNAME has been created:

- https://www.mycharity.org/GivingDay 

What is a CNAME record?

If you want to know more about CNAME record, click here.

How do I setup a CNAME record?

If you have an IT team (website manager, hosting manager, web developer), please ask them directly to do it for you, otherwise try to follow this guide.

In order to proceed, you have to find out where is your domain name managed or where is your website hosted. Then, you will need to find out how to access to your domain name DNS settings.

Most of the time, your domain name, website hosting and DNS are managed in the same place, so let's take a look at a straight forward scenario:

My charity website (domain name): www.mycharity.org

Website hosting company: godaddy.com 

Once you have identified where your website/DNS are managed, search for the following:

"Godaddy add CNAME Record" (replace Godaddy by the name of your service provider)

Most companies will have an article in their help section that will take you through the steps to add a CNAME record. In this example, here is Godaddy's article.

Follow that article to understand how to get to the DNS setting / management of your domain.

Once you have followed the instructions to add a CNAME record, you just need to enter the value provided by GiveEasy. In our example, here it would be:

Type: CNAME

Host: donate

Points to: YOURDOMAIN.org.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com

Make sure to replace YOURDOMAIN.org with your domain name, in our case:

Type: CNAME

Host: donate

Points to: mycharity.org.s3-website-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com

Click Save, and you should be good to go.

To clarify, adding this CNAME record will allow you to create links like this:

https://donate.mycharity.org, replace the host value "donate" with another one if it is already in use.