Configuring DNS For The Booking Factory Website
Here I will explain the best practice for configuring DNS on The Booking Factory. Also contains educational DNS info and steps needed for successful connection.
For most hoteliers DNS is way too technical to do themselves, we recommend giving us the login to your domain account such as godaddy.com and we will make the changes for you. However…. If you wish to try yourselves then here are the instructions and some information.
What is DNS?
DNS is like the internet phone book where you look up an address like (yourhotel.com) and it will give the browser the IP address for that website. Without the numbers the browser will not understand and it will not connect. So yes DNS is incredibly important and you need to get it right!
If you’re not sure of who your DNS Provider is, you can use tools like https://www.whois.com/whois/ to find out. Here is a search for hilton.com domain as an example:
They would look to contact Markmonitor if they needed access to their DNS.
CHANGING YOUR DNS
We are willing to make the changes on your behalf but if you really want to go ahead and try yourself then it’s really not that hard.
Step 1 — Cloudflare
Cloudflare has an amazing feature called CNAME Flattening, this means that the root address can use a CNAME instead of an A Record. This is pioneering and it means we can host your website with just one change and no other changes even if we move servers or upgrade.
You can read about Cloudflare CNAME Flattening here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cname-flattening-rfc-compliant-cnames-at-a-domains-root/
Steps to take:
- Sign up for a new account
- Click on “Add Site”
- Add your domain name and begin the scan — This will clone your DNS settings
4. Then follow directions and choose the “Free Plan” then it will ask you to change Name Servers
5. Now this is the technical bit, changing the name servers. This means your passing the DNS control to cloudflare from your current provider. The best way to find out how to do this is to search for your domain providers and change name servers: Example: “Godaddy change name servers” Here is a list of common providers help pages:
Point DNS to Booking Factory
One you have everything setup and working, the next step is to point your root domain and WWW to website.thebookingfactory.com
Step 1: Delete the root domain A record — This is why we went to all the hassle to make a cloudflare account, we need to delete the root A record and create the CNAME instead.
Important: Please make sure all the cloud icons are grey
Now you just need to point the WWW address also, usually it’s good practice to simply point this towards the root.
Are we done?
Hold your horses, Nearly there!
Final step is to check your domain configuration in our application
Go here: https://app.thebookingfactory.com/client/#/website/redirects
Please check if you have added your domain here, if not please add
And also check to see which domain is set as default
Now just wait
Once everything is all completed it usually takes an hour or two for our server to generate the HTTPS certificate for your website and the DNS changes to settle. If you run into any issues please contact us.
The Booking Factory Team
