When getting started with Ion, one of the first things you should do is decide what domain you would like to use for your Ion console (thus, the pages that are created in Ion). This will be the main domain that users will see when they view your digital experience. You will either purchase a new domain to use for your Ion platform pages, or you will have a subdomain created based on your company’s primary domain. You can point as many domains and subdomains toward your Ion console as you wish.

• When your Ion console is initially set up, it will have a dedicated subdomain such as: http://yourcompany.postclickmarketing.com
• The Ion team will create this URL and provide it to you prior to training. It requires no help from anyone on your team.

You can purchase a new domain (URL) or you can set up a subdomain, and point it toward your console’s dedicated subdomain. You can use whatever subdomain you prefer. One we recommend is: http://example.yourcompany.com.

In order to use a subdomain, you will need to ask the person/team who handles http://yourcompany.com domain to:

• Create the subdomain “example” for http://yourcompany.com (http://example.yourcompany.com) and a CNAME record to point the DNS toward your console’s dedicated postclickmarketing subdomain (yourcompany.postclickmarketing.com).

Setting up the subdomain and pointing it toward your console’s dedicated postclickmarketing subdomain we provide to you is very straightforward and it is the preferred option for most customers driving traffic to Ion pages from direct mail, intra-site and search engine marketing. Google pay-per-click campaigns will require your display domain to match the destination domain, so this option is mandatory for digital experiences you create for your search engine marketing campaigns.

You can point as many subdomains and domains toward your Ion console as you wish. Once they are pointed to Ion you will set them up in Ion in the Domain Manager under “Settings“. Your subdomain/domain will  not work unless you set them up in your Domain Manager in the Ion console, so don’t forget this important step. For more information on how to add a (sub)domain to your console’s Domain Manager, click here.

The Domain Manager

You can point one or more domains or subdomains to  your ion console by following the steps below:

Before You Begin

Point your (sub)domain’s DNS to your Ion console’s dedicated postclickmarketing URL. For more information on pointing your (sub)domain’s DNS toward your Ion console’s dedicated postclickmarketing URL, click here.

Let’s Get Started!

1. Click the settings tab in the lower left-hand corner of your your Ion console and then click “Domains”
2. Click the green “New domain” button
3. Give your domain a unique name in the “Domain name” text field
   • i.e. “example.yourcompany.com”
4. Designate this domain as the default domain (optional)
   • *Note: if this (sub)domain is set as the default, it will be the default (sub)domain when a traffic source is opened (it can always be changed as you are creating traffic sources).
5. HTTPS Support
   • These options will designate whether or not your domain or subdomain will require a certificate that ensures secure transactions between web servers and browsers. When a (sub)domain is secured, URLs using that (sub)domain will use “https” instead of “http” on associated pages and indicate to visitors that it is a secure website with a lock icon
     • *Note: the location of the lock icon varies between browsers.  In Internet Explorer, it appears in the bottom-right corner of the browser window.
   • Free certificate option uses LetsEncrypt to secure (sub)domain
   • Use your own option can be selected if your team provides us with a security certificate to install. If you would like to use your own security certificate, please contact your customer success manager to discuss next steps.
6. Designate a redirect URL that you want to send people to when they don’t provide a complete URL matching a specific traffic source.  This is to ensure respondents who come to a bad URL are redirected properly.
   • This might happen if respondent just types in the root domain, such as http://example.yourcompany.com without a specific friendly “slash name” address or a /Casting.aspx automatic address to identify a particular traffic source
   • This might also occur if respondent uses a URL that does not exist (i.e. http://example.yourcompany.com/badguess)
7. You have options for how respondents are sent to the redirect URL
   • Go to the redirect URL “as is”: respondent will be sent to the redirect URL and treated as an organic, unique visitor to the redirect URL
   • Append path and query string: respondent will be sent to the redirect URL with their originally intended path and query string information appended to the URL for data/metric tracking purposes.
   • Append the query string: respondent will be sent to the redirect URL with their originally intended query string information appended to the URL for data/metric tracking purposes.
8. Select one of the following redirect types
   • 302 redirects inform respondents and search engines that the redirect is temporary
   • 301 redirects will indicate to respondents and search engines that the URL has been changed permanently
   • *Note: For most redirects, you will want to select a 302 redirect.  If you are unsure of which redirect to select, check with your SEO manager.
9. Select whether or not you would like this domain to include auto-generated sitemap.xml in robots.txt
   • Opting into this feature would automatically inform search engines that this domain or subdomain is available for crawling and will also automatically update additional information about each URL (i.e. when it was last updated)
10. Enter any custom robots.txt you want to exclude into the associated text box
    • *Note: Web Robots (aka “Web Wanderers, Crawlers, or Spiders) are programs that automatically search the web to index content.  These may be search engines, such as Google, as well as spammers.
    • *Note: By default, your console will allow all robots.txt
11. Upload a favicon
    • *Note: A favicon is a graphic that appears in the left side of the address bar when viewing your ion experience
    • *Note: Must be an .ico file of either 16x16px or 32x32px
12. Click Save
13. Add as many other (sub)domains you would like to have pointed toward your Ion console

You can now create a URL with your subdomain and visit it to confirm that everything is functioning as desired.