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Custom Domain Shortlinks
Custom Domain Shortlinks

Set up your own vanity URL as your shortlink

T
Written by Team found.ee
Updated over 10 months ago

FAQ

Setting up a Custom Domain

Welcome to found.ee Premium & POWER plans! One of the great benefits of found.ee PREMIUM is that you get access to change your shortlink and landing page URL's to your own branded URL. Imagine a world where the link you share on Facebook, that points to YouTube, is https://link.yourdomain.com/shorturl/ or even www.yourdomain.com

Setting up a Custom Domain:

1) If you own shopify.com, don't change your DNS to point shopfiy.com to found.ee, otherwise you'll break a lot of stuff and your customers will no longer see the content on shopify.com, since you're pointing to a different server. Instead create a subdomain like, link.shopify.com.

2) If you don't want to use a subdomain like link.domain.com or goto.domain.com or whatever clever subdomain you come up with, you can use www.domain.com, just remember that if you point it to found.ee, any content on www.domain.com will no longer load for people.

*We don't recommend setting this up with Cloudflare as the steps to set up on Cloudflare are difficult and we can't support this.*

3) Make sure your registrar allows you to update your CNAME or A record. Some of our recommended registrars are GoDaddy, NameCheap, and Domain.com. Feel free to click on one of those links, as they point directly to their respective DNS editing instructions.

4) Once a custom domain has been used by any account, it cannot be used in another account. Duplicates are not allowed, as to protect your shortlink from being hijacked.

5) This one is less of a caveat, but we wanted to let you know that found.ee will automatically issue you an SSL CERT for the domain that you use in your custom domains.

Connect your domain

  1. Log in to the account that you have with your domain provider.

  2. Find your DNS settings. Look for your domain management area, DNS configuration, or similar.

  3. Find the CNAME record in your DNS settings.

  4. Change your subdomain CNAME record to point to found.ee. For example, if you want your subdomain link.my-kicks.com to point to your found.ee account, then change your link CNAME record to point to found.ee

  5. Or just change your CNAME www. record to point to found.ee directly if you prefer, such as www.my-kicks.com

  6. Save the CNAME Record (usually by clicking Save or Add record or similar).

  7. From your found.ee account, click on CUSTOM DOMAINS, give this new custom domain a name, type or paste in your URL, select MAKE PRIMARY and click CREATE.

  8. Wait for the confirmation email, or come back to the CUSTOM DOMAINS to check in on the status. found.ee will continue to monitor the DNS for updates, and let you know when your new custom domain is ready for shortlinks and pages. This may take 48 hours, but you can still use found.ee shortlinks and pages in the meantime of course.

CNAME: A type of record that also adds a prefix to your domain name. A CNAME can't point to an IP address. It can only point to another domain name or URL address. For example, you can create a CNAME for link.my-kicks.com that points to found.ee.

Here are a couple of the most often answered questions we get about Custom Domains, followed by a couple of things we want you to know about opting for a Custom Domain:

Q: Why can’t I verify my shortlinks on Facebook for my custom domain, and is there a way to resolve them?

Facebook does NOT allow people to verify a third-party domain. Nor do they allow a subdomain of a domain where you don't control the root domain.

Ex.” https://yourdomainhere.found.ee “

-One way to resolve, would be to use your own root domain to point to found.ee, and you can verify that root domain with Facebook.

However, if that root domain is your primary website, it wouldn’t work to point to found.ee, as that would negate people from seeing the content on your website.

In this instance, you could use your root domain to create a subdomain which you could then point to found.ee

What we suggest in this case is to create something like this

Ex. " lnk.root-domain.com " so that you can point to found.ee while still getting Facebook to verify your domain.

Q: What happens to my email functionality if I point my custom domain to found.ee?

While we can't advise on how your registrar or your mail server works, the custom domain instructions we provide do not require any MX Record changes, so we don't foresee any impact on your email address, however you should consult your registrar or your email service provider

Q: What happens to my previously created shortlinks after I create my own custom domain? Do I need to recreate them manually?

Setting up a custom domain does not automatically update your previously created link or page URL's. This is because most people have many links circulated throughout the web and we wouldn't want old URL's to 404 (like if you have a found.ee URL to a page in your Instagram bio and haven't updated it yet).

But you can go back through any previous links and update them to the new custom domain. Just go to Edit Links > Select Custom Domain > Finish

Q: My domain is verified, but I'm getting a 404 error - what's going on?

Check to make sure that you are not using capital letters in your URL - this can cause issues with link creation

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