Domains
Setting up your domain is not something you have to do often, but it’s important that you do it properly the first time.
Setting up a good domain will make searching for your marketplace easier and will more likely appear on the first page of a search engine when someone is looking for your product or service. In addition, having a similar custom domain for your primary website (if you have any) and your marketplace will avoid a disconnect between your brand since customers have the impression that the marketplace that they visit are coming from a singular source.
Understanding how domains work is not an easy task, but there are only a couple of main points you need to know to set up your custom domain.
To help you understand the different terminology when dealing with Domain Name Server records (DNS records), we have compiled a list of common terms about domains.
(Primary) Domain
It is a URL, or the website address, linked to a specific IP address. This is how your customers go to find your marketplace, where it appears on the address bar of your web browser. This can be either a root domain or a sub domain. A website can have multiple domains, linking users to the same site.
Root domain
This is the domain name that you purchase from your domain provider (e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc).
It does not contain a prefix, such as www., but has a top-level domain (TLD) extension like .com, .org, or .net. An example of a root domain is arcadier.com.
Sub-domain
This is the prefix that comes before the root domain. It can be in the form of help.yourmarketplace.com or blog.yourmarketplace.com
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certification
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, which is the industry standard for security technology used by millions of websites in the protection of their online transactions with their customers. SSL ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. Your customers’ browsers provide a key indicator (the lock icon in the right-hand corner) to let them know they are currently protected by an SSL encrypted session.
To create an SSL connection, a web server requires an SSL Certificate. The SSL Certificate will contain your domain name, company name, address, expiration date of the Certificate and details of the Certification Authority responsible for the issuance of the Certificate.
When a browser connects to a secure site, it will retrieve the site's SSL Certificate and check that it has not expired, it has been issued by a Certification Authority the browser trusts, and that it is being used by the website for which it has been issued. If it fails on any one of these checks, the browser will display a warning to the end user letting them know that the site is not secured by SSL.
If you would like to purchase a SSL Certificate for your domain, do refer to Adding an SSL certificate tab of this section of the help centre for more details.