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Member area and account

Connecting your own domain

Run the member area at your own address: pick a subdomain, set two DNS records, let CourseKit check them.

Which address?

Your own address on film: enter it, set the records at your provider, check – with sound and captions.

Under “Settings” → “Custom domain” a guide walks you through four steps: enter the address, choose the provider, set the records, let CourseKit check. A custom domain is part of the Growth plan and above and of the trial, and only the owner sets it up.

A subdomain such as courses.your-website.com is best. Your website stays as it is, and only this one address points to your member area. The main address (your-website.com) works too – but then the whole domain points to the member area, and a website there is no longer reachable.

Note: Your admin always stays at your CourseKit address; if someone opens /admin on the custom domain, they land there. Your own address is for your members. Anyone who signed in through the CourseKit address signs in once more on the new one.

Setting the records

You set the records where your domain is managed – usually the provider you bought it from (for example Wix, IONOS, Strato, All-Inkl). CourseKit usually detects the provider, shows the menu path and names the fields the way that provider does.

“Custom domain”: enter the address, then the records at your provider follow.
  1. Open the domain's DNS management at your provider.
  2. Add a TXT record: copy name and value from CourseKit. It is the ownership proof.
  3. Add a CNAME record (an A record for the main address): again name and value from CourseKit. It is the routing.
  4. Save. CourseKit checks the rest automatically.

Depending on the provider the name field is called “Name”, “Host”, “Host name” or “Subdomain”, the value field “Value”, “Points to”, “Target”, “Content” or “Data”. If the name field already ends in your domain, enter only the first part – as CourseKit shows it. “@” stands for the main address and is wrong for a subdomain.

Note: Your email records (MX) stay untouched. Do not delete anything you do not recognise – unless CourseKit points you to it explicitly, such as an old AAAA record.

If an agency or your IT sets the records, hand them over with “Copy all records” or “Share by email”.

Checking and errors

While the page is open, CourseKit checks the records every 20 seconds and shows for each whether it was found. DNS changes usually take a few minutes, rarely up to a day. You can close the page and open it again later.

After about 10 minutes with the page open, the automatic check stops; the page then says “Automatic checking stopped - please check manually.” With “Check now” you check by hand, and if you reload the page, the automatic check starts again.

“Wrong” means: there is a record, but with a different value – CourseKit shows what it found. Often the domain was entered twice (…your-domain.com.your-domain.com) or a character is missing. For the main address an old A or AAAA record of a parking page often gets in the way; CourseKit tells you which one to delete.

Once every record is found, the address is active and the certificate for https is issued automatically.