How to take your website LIVE

Are you ready? Let's go live!

There are 2 ways to go live.:

If you're not familiar with either of those, we'd recommend A) as that would let us manage your DNS on your behalf. Otherwise, if you'd rather manage your domain's DNS, click here for those instructions.

A) Update domain nameservers

Here are four simple steps to go LIVE with your brand new eCatholic website.

1. Access your website registrar account

In order to take your new website LIVE at your domain name (web address), you'll just need access to the registrar account where your domain name is registered to update nameservers.

Need help finding your website registrar?

If you need help figuring out who your domain's registrar is, or who at your organization might have that account login, just let us know and we can help you dig for some more information! Some commonly used domain registrars are GoDaddy, Network Solutions, or Bluehost.

If you have access to the registrar account but need assistance with making this change, you can call or email support and provide us with your login information for the registrar account, and we will be happy to help you update the nameservers.

If you have not yet purchased a domain to use with your new website, we can help! Please contact [email protected] so we can begin the process of creating your domain.

2. Send us your website's domain name

Before you update your nameservers, eCatholic will need to know what your domain name (web address) will be. If you have already sent us your new or existing domain name (web address), you may move on to step 3.

If you signed up for a trial website without entering a preferred domain name, please send your eCatholic trial web address and chosen domain name to [email protected], and we will let you know when you can successfully update your nameservers.

3. Update your nameservers

Once you have accessed your website registrar account update your nameservers to the following:

mario.ns.cloudflare.com

nataly.ns.cloudflare.com

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR EMAILS AND SUBDOMAINS:

If you use your domain name for anything else in addition to the website, such as email or subdomains, you'll need to provide us with the current DNS records for your domain before updating the nameservers. That way, we can ensure that everything else will carry over smoothly when you do take your website LIVE.

4. Wait for propagation lag and certificate cycle to run

After updating your nameservers, you should be able to see your new site at your domain name within a few minutes to 48 hours, depending on how long it takes for the propagation lag to wear off and your SSL certificate to run.

The propagation lag allows time for your domain to gather all the new information from servers. Since your eCatholic website comes with an SSL certificate to encrypt your site communication, there also needs to be time for the new certificate to cycle through. If you try to view your website on your browser before this period has fully occurred, you may see an alert in your browser saying your site is not private or insecure.

If this happens, simply wait a few more hours or until the morning for things to sort out on their own. It could take as long as 48 hours for everything to cycle through.

Note: We recommend going live in the evening when traffic is minimal. The process to set up your eCatholic website with a security certificate for your domain name occurs at the top of every hour, so there will be some downtime.

My website is live...now what?

Once your site is live, make sure you're getting the most out of your efforts! We've posted a list of helpful tips and action items on the blog. Check out My website is live...now what? on the eCatholic blog to help you continue building an amazing new site!

B) Update DNS

If you're familiar with DNS, you'll just need to know what the correct DNS Values.

Note: The SSL certificate for your site can only be setup after you point your DNS at eCatholic. For this reason, there will be some downtime while your change propagates, as our servers refuse any non-SSL connections. We recommend going live later in the day or at night while traffic is low to minimize the downtime for visitors.

Here is how you can find your site's DNS Zones.

Log into your eCatholic site
Click on Admin
Scroll down to the section Domain Names & Cloudflare near the bottom of the Overview tab
Click on the View Instructions link off to the right

That will reveal the a screen similar to what's pictured below, and you can use the Copy link to obtain the correct values to paste into your domain's DNS.

If you have any questions about setting this up, feel free to email [email protected].