By default your Member Splash account website will live on a subdomain assigned to you by Member Splash.
example: sunnydayswim.membersplash.com
The protocol refers to how the connection to the website is made. All Member Splash sites come with an SSL certificate and are only accessible via a secure connection using https.
The subdomain allows for splitting a domain name into sections and delivering different content or sites for each section. In the case of Member Splash, each unique subdomain maps to a specific client site.
The domain is the primary address for a site.
The TLD - top level domain -- is the website extension. Examples include .com, .org, .info, etc.
Using Your Own Domain With Your Member Splash Site
Our Essentials + and Premium plans offer the ability to connect your existing custom domain name to your Member Splash site.
example: sunnydayswimclub.com
If you are on a plan that allows using your own domain name there are a few ways that it can be set up.
DNS record changes are made by our support team for every club. Submit a ticket with your domain, the record type, the host, the value, and the service it is for, and our team will take it from there. The options below explain what is involved. Please don't change records yourself unless our team has asked you to.
Option 1: Update Your A and CNAME Records
The A (address) record maps your domain name to the numeric IP address of the server where your site is hosted. The exact steps vary by registrar but you will need to make two changes to your root domain and www records:
Update your existing root domain A record (yourdomain.com) to point to the IP address 159.89.218.29. Your root domain should have only this one A record.
Update your www record to be a CNAME pointing to customer.msplash.app, rather than a separate A record.
Please leave your email (MX) and all TXT records exactly as they are.
Updating your A and CNAME records will not change any of your other DNS records, such as the records for your email accounts. If you are using Google mail, for example, your DNS settings will include MX records (mail exchanger) that look roughly like this:
Warning: Your site depends on exactly two records: the root A record pointing to 159.89.218.29 and a www CNAME pointing to customer.msplash.app. Changing either one, or adding another A, AAAA, or www record, will take your site offline. If you are unsure of your setup, contact support before making changes.
Option 2: Use Our Nameservers
Nameservers are basically the phone book of the internet, mapping user friendly domain names to IP addresses. Every domain has designated name servers that serve as the authoritative record. Typically clients use the name servers provided by their registrar and update their DNS records there. Another option is to designate Member Splash's nameservers as the authoritative ones, allowing us to manage your records for you on our Cloudflare-backed infrastructure. A substantial percentage of Member Splash customers opt for this option.
To do that you would set your nameservers at your registrar to the following:
sofia.ns.cloudflare.com
tim.ns.cloudflare.com
Once our team has copied your existing records over and the change takes effect, your website and email will keep working. If you'd prefer, provide access to your registrar account and our team can make this change for you and copy over your existing DNS records.
"Managed by Cloudflare" at your registrar does not necessarily mean our nameservers. Ours are only sofia.ns.cloudflare.com and tim.ns.cloudflare.com. Some clubs use their own Cloudflare account.
Changing nameservers moves every DNS record (website, email MX/SPF/DKIM, and verification TXT records). If the records are not copied over first, your website and email will stop working. Our team handles this move for you, so please contact support rather than changing nameservers yourself.
Note that if you opt for this option any future changes to your records, such as switching email providers and needing to update the MX records, would need to be performed by our team.
Option 3: Have Member Splash Manage Your Domain
For our Premium plan customers we offer included domain registration and management. This is a popular option for volunteer organizations which often find it challenging to keep track of who is responsible for configuring your domain and renewing the registration.
If you opt for this option you will transfer your domain name to our account at GoDaddy and our team will take over the management. We even pick up the renewal fees at no charge!
You continue to own your domain name, and should you ever opt not to renew your Member Splash service we will transfer it to wherever you request.
If you are interested in this option please contact our support team.
DNS and Caching
No matter which route you go it's important to note that changes to DNS records take some time to propagate so there will likely be some period of time during the transition where your users aren't seeing the new site. We can help minimize that by managing the updates for you. We explain DNS and Caching in detail here.