How to add your custom branded domain to the JotURL Dashboard and configure its options

This article provides you with all the instructions you need to add your custom branded domain to the JotURL dashboard and configure the related options.

Before reading this article, we remind you that you should first choose and register your custom branded domain, configure it on your preferred Registrar / Provider, and only then proceed with the set-up within the JotURL dashboard. If you haven't done these preliminary steps yet, you can find below the related documentation to help you get them done:

• At this link you can find an Article with some tips and guidelines that can help you to choose your domain, or to understand where to register it.
• At this link, instead, you can find a technical article with instructions and all the information to configure your domain on your Registrar / Provider, before adding it to JotURL. 

After these steps you can proceed to set up your domain within the JotURL Dashboard - please continue reading the article to find all the related instructions.

Domain Configuration

First you need to access the JotURL dashboard and click your account in the upper right corner:

Click the “Settings” item to access the various options that can be configured starting from your profile.

There are a lot of options available, you have to choose “Domains”.

All your branded domains are registered and added on this page, within this list every record can be kept under control, modified and updated without anything ever being lost.

Click the “Add Domain” button to add a new domain to JotURL.

Fill in the fields by entering the name and the extension (TLD) of your domain.

Robots.txt Settings

When setting up a domain on JotURL it is important to take into account the settings of your robot.txt The default robot.txt appears with this flag " Do not serve the robots.txt file (equivalent to admitting all bots)". 

The flag can be deactivated, but at that point you must indicate a configuration for the Content of the robots.txt file, served for the domain.

Below you can find an  example of robots.txt that allows the Facebook crawler to crawl the URLs and not allow all others:

User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Again, please note that: 

- Not serving the robots.txt gives free access to all bots within your domain, including crawlers and bots that help with indexing on Google, Facebook crawlers ( used also to obtain the Open Graph previews ), and other engines.

- Serving the robots.txt means introducing regulations that control the behaviour of bots, possibly limiting some of their actions or access, or allowing the access of specific bots (depending on the rules expressed within the file). The robots.txt- depending on its configuration - could also block the operations of bots that index on Google. For this reason, we recommend that you carefully check the configuration of the robots.txt to adapt it to your needs.

At this link, you can find a complete guide to the robots.txt file, and on how to change its configuration based on your needs.

Advanced Options ( Optional )

If you want - it's not mandatory - to set up the additional options, here you can find some guided steps.

In addition to adding a nickname or favicon to your domain, you can decide to associate a specific deep linking configuration for your domain. Let's have a look at the Advanced Options more in detail:

• The Nickname: it is a name that appears instead of the full domain name in the tracking link list, it could be particularly useful if the domain is long (because the nickname takes up less space) - you can consider it as an optional operation.
• Associate a Deep Link Configuration for your domain: in case you own or manage a mobile app and use deep links to pages within the mobile app, you can associate a specific deep linking configuration for your domain. Please refer to this article for all details, in case you need to setup advanced deep linking for your mobile App(s). 
• Force an HTTPS connection: the possibility of forcing an HTTPS connection for your domain is OPTIONAL. And the flag takes effect only if a valid SSL certificate is associated with the domain. Please read this article to discover how to add (even for FREE) a digital SSL certificate to your custom-branded domain.
• Do not perform security checks: by default, JotURL usually runs some security checks to verify whether the added custom domain responds or not, and whether the correspondent DNS records have already propagated correctly or not. If you want JotURL to run the above security checks, please leave this option unflagged. Viceversa, if (and only if) you want JotURL NOT to run those security checks, you will have to flag this option. 

Finally, please note that SSL credentials establish an encrypted connection between a browser or computer and a server or network. At each session, the SSL connection protects credit card information and other information that is not intercepted by unauthorized parties.

For this reason, activating an SSL certificate is very important for the security of your site, your content and your users. Furthermore, an SSL certificate is necessary in order to assure mobile deep links work properly.

After these Optional operations you can save your branded domain and start making the most of its features.

Please contact us if you need further assistance on this topic.