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.
Our strong recommendation is to delegate access to your domain name account to our support team so they can make the necessary changes for you. Pointing a domain name to a new site requires changes on both your end and ours and allowing our team to perform both pieces ensures that it will work correctly and minimize downtime.
Option 1: Update Your A Record
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 simply update your existing A record to point to the IP address 68.183.16.177.
Updating your A record 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:
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 the Member Splash nameservers as the authoritative ones, allowing us to manage your records for you. A substantial percentage of Member Splash customers opt for this option.
To do that you would provide access to your registrar account so that our team can copy over your existing DNS records and update the name server settings. If you prefer to do that yourself you will need to provide a copy of your current DNS settings.
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.