We’re here to help
Cadenzabox allows you to map any custom domain name to your library. Of course!
We’re happy to help you through the whole setup process using your existing DNS provider.
To www, or not to www 🎭
When choosing which domain name you want to promote on social media, business cards, etc., some clients prefer to use their “apex” (or “root”) domain, whilst others prefer to include a subdomain like www:
example.comwww.example.com
Cadenzabox allows both to work just fine. 🤓
Whichever of these you choose to promote, we recommend redirecting one to the other. This offers a marginal SEO improvement as it avoids “split ranking signals”, where any links, shares, likes, etc., might get split between the two competing addresses for each page.
Please let us know which you would like as your “primary” address, and we’ll redirect all incoming traffic to that address.
…or neither!
If you already have a promotional site at your apex and www subdomain that you wish to retain, you could host your Cadenzabox instance at one of the following subdomains:
music.example.comsearch.example.comlibrary.example.com- etc.
DNS settings
In a nutshell… 🐿️
| Type of domain | Example | Record type | DNS record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apex domain | example.com | A record | 216.24.57.1 |
| Apex domain (our preference, where available) | example.com | ANAME / ALIAS record | {{org_name}}.cadenzabox.com…using your organisation name |
| Subdomains | www.example.commusic.example.com | CNAME record | {{org_name}}.cadenzabox.com…using your organisation name |
Apex / root domain
An apex domain, or root domain looks like example.com, without a subdomain like www.
To map your apex domain to your Cadenzabox instance, set up an A record and point it to this IP address: 216.24.57.1. Please give us 24 hours’ notice before making this DNS change, as there’s a little setup needed on our side for this DNS mapping to work correctly.
If your DNS host supports ALIAS or ANAME records, please point to {{org_name}}.cadenzabox.com as you would for a subdomain.
Subdomains
A subdomain is the first part of a domain name, for example the www in www.example.com.
We recommend always setting up a www subdomain, but you could also have any subdomain of your choice, for example music.example.com.
Tip
If you do choose a subdomain other than
www(e.g.music.example.comorsearch.example.com) please let us know as we need to configure each specifically.
To map your subdomain(s) to your Cadenzabox instance, set up a CNAME record (a canonical name record) and point your subdomain to the following: {{org_name}}.cadenzabox.com.
Once your domain is live, it appears under Settings > General in the admin as your Domain, with any Alias domains and a Redirect all aliases option.
Please ask us your organisation’s specific Cadenzabox “org name” which needs to be substituted for {{org_name}} above when configuring your DNS. For example if your company is “Heroic Publishing”, your Cadenzabox CNAME address might be heroic.cadenzabox.com.
The best test is to visit the CNAME address in a browser to check if your site is there. 🕸️ 👀
Apex domain best practice 🤓
ANAME or ALIAS records, are a specialised type of DNS record. They allow for CNAME-like records at the apex (or root) of a domain, which the traditional DNS standards do not allow.
Instead of linking an apex domain directly to an IP address like an A record would, ANAME/ALIAS records point to another domain name, just like a CNAME record does.
This is preferable as we can then offer improved uptime reliability for your site.
Should the rare need arise to reroute your site to a new hosting environment, ANAME/ALIAS records give us that rerouting ability quickly at scale, without needing to manually update individual clients’ DNS admin panels.
DNS providers with support
Several DNS providers support ANAME or ALIAS records:
- Akamai (previously FastDNS):
ALIAS— info - Cloudflare:
CNAME Flattening— info - DNS Made Easy:
ANAME— info - DNSimple:
ALIAS— info - Dreamhost:
ALIAS— info - easyDNS:
ANAME— info - Gandi.net:
ALIAS— info - Google Cloud:
ALIAS— info - Hostinger:
ANAME— info - Name.com:
ANAME— info - Namecheap:
ALIAS— info - NS1:
ALIAS— info - PointDNS:
ALIAS— info