How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: RalphC (WEM)

2017-11-30 10:51
last edited: 2023-06-29 08:45

Moderator

Information also available in the WEM Online Documentation.

At some point you might want to use a hostname that is part of your own domain to be linked to your WEM-portal.

Something like https://portal.yourdomain.ext 

That is surely possible, for portals in the EUR-zone:

  1. Create a CNAME record for this hostname in your domain's DNS management (or let your DNS management people do this for you).
  2. Point the CNAME to live.wem.io. (the last dot can be optional in some DNS editors... these will remove the last dot and that is OK).
  3. Add this hostname to your portal settings and publish from Modeler to Staging and Live (publish is a linear chain) WITHOUT forcing https (there is no certificate yet).
  4. For an SSL Certificate, make a specific request in MyWEM Support (read on for more details). When the SSL certificate is available, you can activate the option Force HTTP and again, publish this change from modeler to staging and live.

You can use the staging environment for a testportal.yourdomain.ext, by using staging.wem.io as targetvalue for the CNAME record.

ONLY use live.wem.io (for live/production) and staging.wem.io (for test/acceptance) as target values for your CNAME records!

These (live/staging .wem.io) are the domains by which the WEM Runtime Servers are known and reached on the internet in our EUR Zone; once the WEM Runtime Server is reached, the WEM Runtime will recognize your actual hostname and the corresponding portal will be loaded and presented to the user.

So, for CNAME records in your domain's DNS management, use:

Your domain hostnames   CNAME target
portal.yourdomain.ext   live.wem.io
testing.yourdomain.ext   staging.wem.io


 

Wait until the DNS-change is available through nameservers (can take up to 24 hours).

You can check this using Google's DIG: https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/

Use HTTPS

The above steps will be enough for portals without SSL (https).

To have SSL available as well, WEM offers the service for free Let's Encrypt certificates.

If you want to have SSL enabled on your portal on your own domain, you need to create a Ticket in MyWEM, requesting a Let's Encrypt SSL Certificate for your specific portal by using the specific button [Request SSL Certificate], specifying the hostname for which the certificate should be made.

We can only create Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for a hostname if the CNAME is pointing to live.wem.io, we check this using Googles DIG online tool. The process following the [Request SSL Certificate] button checks your values automatically for correct CNAME definition.

For Portals in APAC ZONE:

For portals running in the APAC Zone (published to Asia Pacific), the procedure is slightly different, because in that environment we currently need to setup configurations manually for specific hostnames and you can only use the LIVE portal to be hosted on your own custom domain.

  1. Set up a CNAME record in your domain, to point the portal's live hostname (portalname.yourdomain.ext) to live.wemapac.io ;
  2. When the CNAME record is available (check using DIG) , you can create a Support Ticket to request a configuration setup for [portalname.yourdomain.ext]  and we will create the config and add a LetsEncrypt challenge so you can use it with https.

See image linked below for a hopefully helpful explanatory image of CNAME settings and WEM Portal Settings.

DON'T FORGET to PUBLISH your project changes from Modeler to Staging and Live, to transfer the changed settings to the correct Runtime!

explain cname settings.png

Explanatory picture of CNAME and WEM-settings

Ralph - WEM Xpert since 2011

"I speak to machines with the voice of humanity"
-- Marillion, Man of a thousand faces --

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Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: Christof

2018-01-04 18:10

Thanks for this explanation. Does this also work in the same way for staging?

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: RalphC (WEM)

2018-01-24 08:45

Moderator

This should not be applied to staging.

There should be no need for it in staging, as staging is not meant to be a production environment. Only for production portals you might want or need a hostname different from live.wem.io.

Ralph - WEM Xpert since 2011

"I speak to machines with the voice of humanity"
-- Marillion, Man of a thousand faces --

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: Christof

2018-01-24 09:34

Thank you for the response!

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: Danny

2019-04-09 06:29

Hello,

Is the SSL certifying automated or do we still need to create a ticket for that ?

Thanks.

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: RalphC (WEM)

2019-04-09 08:30

Moderator

Ticket is still required, and I've seen that you've already done so and that the certificate is already in place.

Ralph - WEM Xpert since 2011

"I speak to machines with the voice of humanity"
-- Marillion, Man of a thousand faces --

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: FJP

2019-08-28 10:06
last edit: 2019-08-28 10:34

Hi, do I understand it correct that SSL is not possible for staging environments and therefore it is best to not to create a custom hostname for staging if we want it to run under SSL?

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: RalphC (WEM)

2019-08-28 10:12

Moderator

SSL is very well possible for staging environments.

For this you need to use the CNAME staging.wem.io for your own staging hostname in DNS, and create a ticket to ask for a LetsEncrypt SSL-certificate for that specific hostname.

But you do not need to, if you just use hostname {yourportal}.staging.wem.io (then you'll automatically join the wildcard domain and SSL settings).

The original post states this:

Your domain hostnames   CNAME target
portal.yourdomain.ext   live.wem.io
testing.yourdomain.ext   staging.wem.io

Ralph - WEM Xpert since 2011

"I speak to machines with the voice of humanity"
-- Marillion, Man of a thousand faces --

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: FJP

2019-08-28 10:35
last edit: 2019-08-28 10:36

Thanks. Are there any costs associated to this Certificate. Looking at their site I only see a donate button, so I suppose this is part of the services WEM is providing. Am I correct?

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: RalphC (WEM)

2019-09-13 12:32

Moderator

LetsEncrypt certificates are free.

WEM Platform/Infra management needs to make some config changes manually. This is currently free of charge, but that might be changed in near future.

Ralph - WEM Xpert since 2011

"I speak to machines with the voice of humanity"
-- Marillion, Man of a thousand faces --

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: Bert T

2020-05-22 02:50

We would like to use a "catch all" url for our applications, so all our apps can be reached at *.app.domein.nl

for example:

application1.app.domein.nl

application2.app.domein.nl

application3.app.domein.nl

etc.

for this we can acquire an "catch all"  PKI certificate.

What should the DNS entry look like?

Re:How to link your own hostname/domain to your WEM-Portal

By: RalphC (WEM)

2020-05-22 04:03

Moderator

Try a cname record with wildcard in its name.

*.app.domein.nl CNAME live.wem.io.

Ralph - WEM Xpert since 2011

"I speak to machines with the voice of humanity"
-- Marillion, Man of a thousand faces --

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