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Can I change online.flippingbook.com to my own domain?

Product: FlippingBook Online

Note! This article contains information on one of the advanced FlippingBook Online features. If you feel like it might be difficult to understand from just plain text or you need some help with the domain, feel free to book a meeting with one of our specialists.

Yes, it is possible to replace the online.flippingbook.com-part of your links with a subdomain of your own website, for example, brochures.mybrand.com. We call this feature Custom Domain. It is available in FlippingBook Online Advanced, Team, and Enterprise plans.

Such branded URLs look much more professional when you share them. It also increases trust when your clients find your flipbooks on search engines. (According to bitly.com, a branded URL can increase click-through rates by up to 34%).

Want to learn more about Custom Domain?

 

How does a custom domain work?

Even though the links will show your domain, all your flipbooks are still hosted on our cloud servers. You keep creating flipbooks in your FlippingBook Online account, just like you normally do. We just link your FlippingBook account to your domain, so when a viewer clicks your branded link, they see your flipbook. To achieve this, you will also have to make a small modification on your end. But this is just once, and all your flipbooks, new and existing, will be available via your branded URL.

 

What do I need to do to set up my custom domain?

Custom Domains are available for the Advanced, Team, and Enterprise plans only, so make sure that you are on one of these plans before continuing. If you use a lower FlippingBook plan, then you'd first need to upgrade your account to at least Advanced.

Also, make sure you have your own domain that looks like yoursite.com. 

So if your plan is Advanced, Team, and Enterprise and you have your own domain, you're ready to set up a custom domain. It requires 4 steps:

    1. Decide what subdomain you want to use
      We advise you to carefully consider what your custom domain should look like. For example catalogs.yoursite.com, publications.yoursite.com, or ebooks.yoursite.com, etc. We would advise you not to set the scope too narrow. E.g. privacy-policy.yoursite.com will not be very useful for any other document than your privacy policy. It is possible to change the custom domain later, but the old links will stop working! Please note that it has to be a subdomain. We can't use yoursite.com directly. 

    2. Set up a DNS-alias for your subdomain to online.flippingbook.com
      You'll need to set up something on your end so the traffic for your custom domain is redirected to us. This requires a small technical change (you have to set up a CNAME in the DNS for your domain). You may need some help from your IT-staff or hosting provider. Please follow our instructions to set up a CNAME or forward them to your IT-staff. 

    3. Contact our support to finalize the setup
      After you have set up the CNAME, then please inform our support team which custom domain you have set up. We will check it and set up everything on our end. We'll also request an SSL-certificate so your custom domain will work over HTTPS. When all is done, we will get back to you to confirm that your custom domain is live. This typically takes an hour or so, but it could take up to 24 hours.

    4. Check your existing embedded flipbooks
      If you have embedded any of your flipbooks to your website prior to requesting a custom domain, the embed code needs to be updated (you can generate the new version of it with the same Embed button) when the domain starts working. If you do not update the embed code, the fullscreen mode will not work.

 

How do I configure the CNAME?

To set up the CNAME it’s probably best to contact the administrator of your website or your hosting provider for assistance. But the general way to create a CNAME record is outlined in the instructions below.

  • The record should be created on those servers to which the domain "yourdomain.tld" is delegated.
  • Open the DNS management page on the website of the company that provides you with DNS hosting services.
  • Create a CNAME record with the following field values ​​(field names may differ in different control panels):
    • Name — “catalog”.
    • In some control panels, the record name must specify the full name of the subdomain, such as "catalog.yourdomain.tld".
    • Value — “online.flippingbook.com.”. Note that you don't need to change the server name (don't replace "domain" with the name of your domain).
    • The dot at the end of the server name is required unless your control panel adds this dot by default.
  • Wait while the changes take effect in DNS. This process usually takes 24-48, but it could even take up to 72 hours.

The exact way of adding a CNAME record depends on your domain provider. Here are instructions from some popular domain providers:

If in doubt please ask your hosting provider for help.

 

How long does it take to activate or change my domain?

After we set up your custom domain it can take up to 24-48 hours to work. We can't do anything to speed that up, sorry. This is inherent to the way the internet is built. All over the internet, there are Domain Name Servers that store information about which domain name is connected to which server. These servers don't update their information instantly. Changes in DNS are pretty rare, so they cache such information. Most commonly, this is somewhere between 5 minutes and an hour, but it can also be 24 hours or even longer.

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