Steps to launch a site once you're ready to go live.
Note: If you're a Nyla customer preparing for your site launch, please see this article instead.
Important: if you are not an expert with DNS settings, ensure to consult with your Nyla Success team contact ahead of making these changes.
Pre-launch steps
It's recommended to review these steps at least a week before your intended launch date. They can be done safely without any service disruption/downtime to your site at any time.
1. Connect checkout.<your-domain>.com to Shopify
If you bought your domain via Shopify, you can find the instructions in Add a subdomain for your Shopify-managed domain. Otherwise, if you bought your domain elsewhere, you can find the general instructions in Connecting a third-party subdomain to Shopify.
Either automatically or manually, you will end up adding the following DNS record:
- Type: CNAME
- Name / host / subdomain: checkout
- Value (must include the final .): shops.myshopify.com.
- TTL: <any / default is OK>
After adding it on Shopify, make sure to change its domain type to alias as explained in Set an alias domain for a target. The target should be Online Store.
Finally, wait for the domain to be ready/work (which can take up to 10 minutes) and go to the Nyla Editor > Apps > Shopify and change your Checkout URL to exactly checkout.<your-domain>.com
- Make sure it starts with checkout (and not https://) and it does not end with /
- Save, queue and publish your changes.
2. Set feed rules for checkout.<your-domain>.com to <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 directly in order to avoid an unnecessary redirect after-launch.
You can find detailed instructions for this step in Product Feeds & Product Feed Apps
3. (sometimes necessary) Change your DNS provider
If you use www.<your-domain>.com as your primary domain or any other subdomain, you're always compatible. You can skip this step.
If you use <your-domain>.com as your primary domain, we recommend changing your DNS provider to a free Cloudflare account.
Cloudflare has quite a few benefits over most DNS providers, such as root/apex CNAME/ALIAS records for more resilience, allows for 60 seconds minimum TTL, allows for DNS edits before pointing nameservers for a no-downtime migration, allows importing/exporting records, allows comments, etc.
You can email your Nyla Success contact and we can do this step for you, or you can do this yourself.
If you're inviting us, please:
- Create a free Cloudflare account (no need to add your domain yet), and invite our account with Administrator permissions
- Invite our account with edit permissions to your current Domain Registrar (where you've purchased your domain), which you can see in WHOIS.
Alternatively, if you're doing this step yourself, you can find instructions on how to change your DNS provider to Cloudflare in their documentation as well. Please pay extra attention on:
- If you have DNSSEC enabled, disable it 48hs before starting (if you happen to have it enabled)
- Set all Cloudflare DNS records' proxy status to DNS only
- Thoroughly review each DNS record (and/or consider deleting the ones Cloudflare automatically creates, and exporting/importing a .txt if your current DNS provider supports it)
- Remove NS/SOA records on the root/apex
If all DNS records are matching exactly, this change does not cause any downtime/service disruption. Changing nameservers can take up to 48hs to propagate worldwide, but all users would continue seeing the same services before/after.
4. Schedule your launch day and invite us to your DNS provider
We'll handle switching over the domain from your current site to Nyla on your desired launch date, outside of office hours and minimizing any service disruption.
For that, please get in touch with your Nyla Success contact asking to schedule your site launch and we'll share further instructions.
If you haven't done so yet, we'll ask you to invite our account with edit permissions to your current Domain Registrar (where you've purchased your domain), which you can see in WHOIS.