Video Transcription

Hello. Welcome to another edition of Tech Tuesday, presented by Delta Media Group. The D is silent. Today we're going to take a look at a subject that we actually hit a while ago. The idea here is, we tried this a while ago and it worked okay then. But it's a complicated subject. Basically we're going to get into agent domain setup. We'll go over how you can create a custom domain, and how you can get it attached to your website. Then we'll go over a new feature we added, which is Agent SSL, or Agent HTTPS. It's how you can add a secure certificate to your own custom domain.

Let's go into the Delta Net and take a look. To set up your own domain, you'll scroll down to Website, and then click on Domains. From here you can see I have a couple of domains set up already. The reason I set these up ahead of time is because there are certain things that have to be in place to be able to set up the secure certificate. But to set up your domain name, the first thing you'll do is act like these two aren't here, because with you they probably won't be. Then click on, "Set up new domain name".

Now from there you just type your domain name in here. The importance of this is, you want to type in just your domain name, so you don't have the HTTP and all that stuff there. From here you're just going to type in, "My domain ...", well you have the example there. "Bestrealestateagentever.com". I don't know if that's taken, but you can have it if it's not.

From there you'll put in your confirmation email. It should default to whatever your public email address is. But if you want this to go to a particular email address you can put in an address there. What that does is, when I submit this it's going to send this domain name over to us so that we can look it over and process it. Basically we're going to look it over and just confirm that it's a valid domain. It's not taken by someone else. That kind of thing.

When we look it over and process it, the system is going to send an email to the address specified here. I'll go ahead and submit it. That's all there is to it. That is step one. From there it could take a little time, up to a couple of days. Then once your domain gets processed, usually it's same day. But once your domain gets processed you'll get an email. That email will say this right here. "Once notified setup is complete, change your name servers to ns1.deltagroup.com and ns2.deltagroup.com".

What that does is, that allows us to control what your domain does. In order to set that up, you'll go into your GoDaddy account. Or, I'm going to show you on GoDaddy because that's where I have an account. But basically you'll do this wherever your domain registrar is. On GoDaddy, you can see I'm already logged in. I'll click here. I'll say, "Visit my account". I'll sign in. It's a good thing I saved my password. Otherwise it'd be a no go right there. Then you can see we have our list of domains here. You may have other services through GoDaddy. But your list of domains should be right up front.

You'll want to click on the DNS button. It's going to think about it. That takes you to the DNS settings for that domain. You'll go down to the section or the card that's labeled Name Servers. You'll click on Change. This will actually be set on default when you click on it. You'll change that to custom. Then it'll open up these two name server fields where you type in, "NS1.deltagroup.com and ns2.deltagroup.com", and then hit save. Once that's done, you have set everything up so that you domain name is basically controlled by us. You can still go back into your GoDaddy account and you can take it back whenever you want to. But at this point, this allows us to control what your domain actually does.

Now, one caveat I'll put there is that before you change those name servers, if you are getting email through that domain. You can see this domain in particular is wolfarth.dev. Right here is the domain name. With that domain name, if I had an email address that was like harley@wolfarth.dev or anything @wolfarth.dev, then you don't want to switch the name servers until you send us the records that are already on this page. I'll just say for that, if you are using email through that domain, just go ahead and send us an email when you get the confirmation, that we process the domain. Just let us know and we can walk you through that process.

Basically it amounts to, you'll have records on this page. Existing records. You'll want to export those records or copy them from this page, and send them over to us so that we can enter them before you change the name servers. If you do that out of order, if you change the name servers before we have those records, then the email through that domain will stop working. In most cases you're probably not going to be using email through this domain. But if you are, keep that in mind.

Once you've changed the name servers, it can technically take 24 to 48 hours for that change to propagate. Before we actually have control of the domain and it starts doing what we tell it to, which means go to your website. But usually when you make switches, especially GoDaddy is particularly quick. Usually when you make that change, within an hour you see the change take effect.

Once that change has taken effect and you can type in your domain name, and it goes to your website as expected, you'll go back into the Delta Net and go to Website and Domains, just like you were before. You'll want to set that domain as your primary. Now if you have more than one you may pick a different one to set as a primary. In this case we'll say you're just setting up the one, or you're setting up the one that you want to make your primary domain. We'll go back here, and you can see we have wolfarth.dev. That's the domain we set up. We pointed it at our Delta Group name server, so it should be going to your website now. Well go on this page and click, "Set as primary".

Now that domain is set as primary, so it's no longer available for redirects. It is laid out as, described as your primary domain. What you'll do is, these domains, the default ones that were set up through your company domain name should already be redirecting to that one. If you have any other custom domain names you'll generally want those to redirect to that one also.

Now there are special setup circumstances where you might not, but we'll say 99 times out of 100 you'll want to redirect those as well. I'll go ahead and set that up. Now I have everything redirecting to my wolfarth.dev domain. Now if I want, because this domain is set as my primary and because it's pointed at our name server so we have control of it, you have the option of adding a security certificate to it. Or a secure website certificate.

There are a variety of reasons to do that. Primarily it ... Well the real meat and potatoes of what it does, like the heart of what it does, is information that's entered into your web browser is encrypted on its way to the web server, is really what it comes down to. If anybody's entering user credentials, username and password, like when people log into their portfolio accounts on your website, this security certificate will encrypt that data from the browser that they're using to our web server. It's already, it's encrypted once it gets here anyway. But this way it's kind of encrypted in transit.

If anyone were watching, if anyone were looking, a man in the middle is what it's called. If anyone were in the middle of that handshake process, that transaction ... When I say transaction I don't mean monetary transaction. But if somebody's in the middle of that, as long as that data's encrypted, they can't read what it is. That's the idea of a security certificate.

The additional benefits and the benefits you see more on the front end of it is that this little not secure, this lock up here, that'll turn into secure and you'll have a little lock up here on all the different web browsers. It makes people feel safer on your website. Also, Google is reporting that they're giving preferential treatment as far as search rankings go to sites that do have a secure certificate. There would be a few of the reasons to add one.

But to add it, you can see right here it says it's a 1999 year. To add it I'll just click, "Add SSL". I would enter my credit card number here. I don't have a credit card number that I can use for testing. But like any other credit card form you've ever seen, enter your card number, your expiration date, your code on the back. First name, last name, and ZIP code. Hit submit, and that's all you have to do. Generally within 24 hours, barring any holidays and things, your security certificate will be processed and you'll start seeing that lock on your site. Like I said, generally within 24 hours.

All right. As always, thanks a lot for joining me this week. Got a new guy running the camera today. Let's get it switched here. Take your time. There we go. Thanks a lot for joining me this week. If you have any questions, concerns, feel free to send an email into support@deltagroup.com. Or give us a call, and we can answer any questions you have. Or comment on any of our videos. It's a pleasure as always, and I will see you again next week.