Any Photo Finale or Foto Depot site (standard PF, Photo Finale Managed or Photo Finale Enterprise) may opt to have a custom domain (fees apply). This means, that instead of yoursite.photofinale.com or yoursite.fotodepot.ca, your store's web address would be www.YOURSITE.com and all links would use that URL.
How to set up a custom domain for your site:
- Opt In: Purchase the custom domain option from Photo Finale Inc. This is a one-time fee; your sales rep will be happy to provide a quote.
- Buy Domain: If you haven't already registered the domain you want to use, buy it. You can buy it from any registrar service. We generally recommend GoDaddy.
- Set up DNS: Now that you own the domain name, you need someone to host the DNS for it. When a user types your domain name into their browser, a DNS service is used to translate that name into the appropriate IP address. You can host and manage DNS yourself by paying a provider (such as GoDaddy) to do it, or you can let Photo Finale host it for you for free. If you don't have a reason to manage it yourself, we recommend that you allow us to do it. Please let your Account Manager know what you decide. Based on your decision we'll send you the appropriate instructions to complete this task.
- Buy SSL: In order to use your custom domain for ecommerce sales, the site needs to have a valid SSL certificate. The SSL certificate will need to be for your exact domain name, which is typically www.YOURSITE.com (don't forget the "www"). There are numerous SSL vendors and various levels of SSL certificates available. Again, we recommend GoDaddy. Generally the most basic level of SSL certificate is sufficient ($70/yr at GoDaddy), however the premium Extended Validation ("EV") certificates may be worthwhile for dealers that do a very high volume of sales online. You can select whichever duration suits you, although we typically recommend 2+ years to minimize your effort to renew it and chances that you may forget.
- Submit CSR: Photo Finale will provide you with a Certificate Signing Request ("CSR") file that is an encrypted text file that includes information on the exact domain name you wish to protect along with our servers' public encryption key. Please contact your Account Manager or technical support if you have not received this from us. You will upload the CSR file to your SSL vendor (e.g. GoDaddy) in order for them to generate the SSL certificate. If you are asked what type of server the certificate will be installed on, choose IIS7 or IIS8.
- Send Us SSL: Once your certificate has been generated, please download the file from your certificate authority and email it back to us. It will be a downloadable as a zip file.
- Schedule Go-Live: Once we have loaded your new SSL certificate onto each of the servers across our clusters, we will then coordinate a go-live time with you to make the DNS switchover for the new site address. Typically this step can take 2-4 days.
If you have any questions on this please feel free to contact support@photofinale.com.