Here are 5 things that need to happen in preparation for the final step of your upcoming launch with Nyla; your domain transfer.
1. Nyla needs edit access to your DNS registrar/provider 7 days before launch.
Two weeks prior to your launch, your onboarding partner will request access to your DNS registrar/provider by granting a specified email address DNS edit access.
You can check which registrar (where your domain was purchased) and which provider (where you edit DNS records) you're using by looking into https://who.is/ under Registrar and Name Servers. In most cases, they're the same vendor.
2. (Sometimes necessary) Nyla will request to change your DNS provider.
If you use www.<your-domain>.com as your primary domain or any other subdomain, and a few more minutes of downtime during launch day are not too concerning, you can skip this step.
If you use <your-domain>.com as your primary domain or want to minimize downtime as much as possible, we will request to change your DNS provider to a free Cloudflare account.
Why do experts recommend Cloudflare? Cloudflare has quite a few benefits over most DNS providers, such as:
-
- allows safe and secure shared access to a domain with different policies for different emails;
- allows root/apex CNAME/ALIAS records for more resilience than an single-point-of-failure IP;
- allows for a very short Time to Live (TTL) of 60s for much better control over propagation;
- allows for DNS edits before changing name servers for a no-downtime transfer;
- allows importing/exporting records, leaving comments for better readability, etc.
You can create your own free Cloudflare account (no need to add your domain yet), and then follow this link to invite our specified email address with Super Administrator permissions. You can do this in less than a minute, and it won't have any impact on your site (video example). Don’t add your domain nor change Name Servers on your Registrar by yourself – we have internal processes to do this automatically and without any issues.
Once we have access, we'll proceed to change the Name Servers. Note that changing Name Servers can take up to 48 hours, meaning we must receive the requested DNS access at least 3 business days before the intended launch. If this access is not granted in time, launch will have to be rescheduled.
During this change, there shouldn't be any downtime nor any issues on your domain as all the DNS records will be kept exactly as before, assuming your current DNS provider continues replying to DNS queries during the propagation time.
3. Nyla will connect checkout.<your-domain>.com to your Shopify Store
A few days before your intended launch date, we'll connect this subdomain to your Shopify Store so users get redirected to it when checking out from your Nyla Site. If you're already using that subdomain for other purposes, we'll usually set up shop.<your-domain>.com but let us know if you have any preference.
4. You'll need to set feed rules for checkout.<your-domain>.com to <your-domain>.com or www.<your-domain>.com
If you have any product feeds that populate from your Shopify store automatically, make sure to configure them so they replace checkout.<your-domain>.com with <your-domain>.com (or www.<your-domain>.com) directly in order to avoid an unnecessary redirect after-launch.
This change is backwards compatible, so you can do it anytime before the launch. You can find more information and detailed instructions for this step in Product Feeds & Product Feed Apps.
5. You'll need to provide express written approval by 6pm EST / 3pm PST the day before launch.
We understand and appreciate that the days leading up to launch will be busy and filled with details you're addressing and projects you're finishing. However, to ensure a smooth launch, we require an unconditional and explicit written confirmation of your launch approval by 6pm EST / 3pm PST the day before your scheduled launch.
Your onboarding partner will reach out to request this, and it must be granted as specified, without conditions of final pre-launch items or other exceptions. If you are not ready for launch, please reach out to your onboarding partner to reschedule your launch to the next available date.