Find out how to set up your Academy domain, and the options available to you.
As an admin, you have two options available for setting up your Academy domain. You can either use an easy-lms.com path, or you can set up your own subdomain. Go to Academy > Settings, and you'll see the radio button options in the Academy domain section. Let's take a look at each in turn.
An easy-lms.com path
This is the default setting when your Academy is set up. Your desired path can simply be entered in the URL name field, before hitting Save.
This is the admin view in the dashboard:
Which will appear to your participants like this:
Your own domain
In order to provide your participants with a known and trusted environment, it is also possible to link your Academy to your own subdomain. To make this work, three steps need be taken.
1. Choose the subdomain to use
You can point your Academy to any subdomain, but that does not mean that any link can be made to work with our system. It means you can choose anything before the .com, .net, .co.uk etc. There cannot be anything after that.
Possible examples:
https://learning.my-own-brand-name.com/
https://www.my-own-brand-name.com/
https://alternative-brand-name.net/
Impossible examples:
https://www.my-own-brand-name.com/anything-after-the-slash
https://alternative-brand-name.net/anything-after-the-slash
In this article, we will set up staging-academy.easy-lms.com as our custom subdomain.
2. Point your subdomain to Easy LMS
So that when users navigate to that website, we receive the browser requests.
For this step, you need to configure the DNS for your subdomain. If you don’t know how to do this, you might want to ask your system administrator for help.
The pointing from your subdomain to our domain is done by adding a CNAME record, and the entry needs to be as follows:
In our example, this would be:
3. Configure Easy LMS for use with your subdomain
Tell our system that your chosen domain belongs to your Academy, so that when we receive a request from your subdomain, we know what to do with it.
Go to Academy > Settings > My own domain and enter your subdomain name in the field provided. This should be without the 'https://' and the final ‘/’. Don't forget to hit Save!
This is the admin view in the dashboard:
Which will appear to your participants like this:
It is not possible to use a top level domain (TLD) with CNAME. Only subdomains can be used.
If you change the domain, the invitation emails you sent before the change will contain the original link to the previous domain.
The domain must have an A record and SSL certificate.
www. is also a subdomain.
4. Common issues
If your Academy does not work after setting up your own domain, please review the following:
Incorrect CNAME
Please make sure the CNAME record is correct, it should read: academy.easy-lms.com
Unpublished DNS record
Please make sure the DNS record is published. You can use the following website to check this: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx
Enter your domain name in the empty field, and click the MX Lookup button. It should look like this, with a green tick next to DNS Record Published:
An example of an unpublished DNS record:
Redirects
If you set up the CNAME correctly, but the domain connected to the CNAME redirects to another site, the Academy will not work. You can check if there is a redirect in place using this website:
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
Sometimes people set up their Academy on the non-www domain (like easy-lms.com) but that will redirect to the www-domain (like www.easy-lms.com).
Delay
Once you have published the DNS settings, you will not be able to see the changes immediately. It depends on the TTL time indicated in the images above, which means 'time to live', how long it will be before the nameservers are updated.
As an admin, you have two options available for setting up your Academy domain. You can either use an easy-lms.com path, or you can set up your own subdomain. Go to Academy > Settings, and you'll see the radio button options in the Academy domain section. Let's take a look at each in turn.
An easy-lms.com path
This is the default setting when your Academy is set up. Your desired path can simply be entered in the URL name field, before hitting Save.
This is the admin view in the dashboard:
Which will appear to your participants like this:
Your own domain
In order to provide your participants with a known and trusted environment, it is also possible to link your Academy to your own subdomain. To make this work, three steps need be taken.
1. Choose the subdomain to use
You can point your Academy to any subdomain, but that does not mean that any link can be made to work with our system. It means you can choose anything before the .com, .net, .co.uk etc. There cannot be anything after that.
Possible examples:
https://learning.my-own-brand-name.com/
https://www.my-own-brand-name.com/
https://alternative-brand-name.net/
Impossible examples:
https://www.my-own-brand-name.com/anything-after-the-slash
https://alternative-brand-name.net/anything-after-the-slash
In this article, we will set up staging-academy.easy-lms.com as our custom subdomain.
2. Point your subdomain to Easy LMS
So that when users navigate to that website, we receive the browser requests.
For this step, you need to configure the DNS for your subdomain. If you don’t know how to do this, you might want to ask your system administrator for help.
The pointing from your subdomain to our domain is done by adding a CNAME record, and the entry needs to be as follows:
In our example, this would be:
3. Configure Easy LMS for use with your subdomain
Tell our system that your chosen domain belongs to your Academy, so that when we receive a request from your subdomain, we know what to do with it.
Go to Academy > Settings > My own domain and enter your subdomain name in the field provided. This should be without the 'https://' and the final ‘/’. Don't forget to hit Save!
This is the admin view in the dashboard:
Which will appear to your participants like this:
It is not possible to use a top level domain (TLD) with CNAME. Only subdomains can be used.
If you change the domain, the invitation emails you sent before the change will contain the original link to the previous domain.
The domain must have an A record and SSL certificate.
www. is also a subdomain.
4. Common issues
If your Academy does not work after setting up your own domain, please review the following:
Incorrect CNAME
Please make sure the CNAME record is correct, it should read: academy.easy-lms.com
Unpublished DNS record
Please make sure the DNS record is published. You can use the following website to check this: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx
Enter your domain name in the empty field, and click the MX Lookup button. It should look like this, with a green tick next to DNS Record Published:
An example of an unpublished DNS record:
Redirects
If you set up the CNAME correctly, but the domain connected to the CNAME redirects to another site, the Academy will not work. You can check if there is a redirect in place using this website:
http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/
Sometimes people set up their Academy on the non-www domain (like easy-lms.com) but that will redirect to the www-domain (like www.easy-lms.com).
Delay
Once you have published the DNS settings, you will not be able to see the changes immediately. It depends on the TTL time indicated in the images above, which means 'time to live', how long it will be before the nameservers are updated.