Limitations on default domain names¶

The default acquia-sites.com domain name provided with your subscription has the following limitations:

• Don’t route production traffic to your acquia-sites.com domain unless it is explicitly listed under the DNS section of your Domains page.
• After creation, your acquia-sites.com domain can’t be changed or removed.
• You can’t add more custom acquia-sites.com domains to an environment.
• Search engine indexing of these domains is disallowed in your robots.txt file.
• Site Factory default domain names use acsitefactory.com instead of acquia-sites.com.
• You can’t generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for an acquia-sites.com domain.
• SSL certificates must not pin to the SSL certificate provided by Acquia for *.acquia-sites.com domains.
• Unless your acquia-sites.com domain is listed under DNS on the Domains page, or you are an Site Factory subscriber, pointing your CNAME to an acquia-sites.com domain can make your application load inefficiently, and can cause unpredictable results or even downtime during platform maintenance activities.

Viewing your IP address or CNAME¶

To view the domain information for an environment, go to the Applications > [Environment] > Domains page, and then scroll to the DNS information card.

The DNS information card displays the CNAMEs and IPv4 addresses (A records). You must configure DNS settings for your domains.

After an environment is created, Cloud Platform provisions the environment with a custom Cloud Platform subdomain with a name ending in acquia-sites.com. For limits on these default domain names, see Limitations on default domain names.

After you add a custom domain name to an environment, the Cloud Platform can route incoming requests for that domain name to the environment selected. You must then configure your DNS settings with your DNS provider to ensure all requests for that domain are routed to Cloud Platform.

IPv6 Support¶

The Cloud Platform supports IPv6 in certain infrastructure configurations. DNS endpoints listed on the Domains page with ‘dualstack’ at the beginning are IPv6 compatible. Please contact Acquia Support if your organization requires IPv6 support and your environment does not currently support it.

Adding a domain name¶

To add a domain to one of your application’s environments:

1. On the Domains page for the environment into which you want to add a domain, click Add Domain in the upper right.

   

   The Add a domain dialog box appears.

2. In the Domain to add field, enter the domain name without the protocol header. For example, use mysite.com instead of http://mysite.com.

   Note

   • You can use the wildcard character ( * ) to make your environment available for several subdomains (for example, *.example.com). 
   • Wildcard characters only match a single word but cannot match multiple words separated by a dot (for example, *.example.com can match a.example.com, but does not match a.b.example.com or www.a.example.com). You can also only use a single asterisk.
3. Click Add domain.

If you want to make your application available to multiple related domain names (such as example.com and www.example.com), individually add each domain name. Otherwise, you can use the wildcard character ( * ) in a single domain entry to allow for subdomains.

Subscribers with many domains may have several pages of domain names displayed on their Domains page. You can either use the pager to browse for a domain, or use the Filter field to search.

Checking domain status¶

You can determine whether your domain name is properly resolving to your Cloud Platform website by clicking click the Status link for the domain on the Applications > [Environment] > Domains page. Acquia performs a DNS lookup for your domain name and displays one of the following status messages:

• DNS resolves to Acquia: Your DNS settings and Cloud Platform are properly configured.
• DNS doesn’t resolve directly to Acquia: Your DNS provider is pointing your domain name to an IP address or CNAME different from the one assigned to that application’s environment. The Domain Status report displays the DNS data and any aliases found for the domain name. This status is normal if you use a CDN with your website. Otherwise, your domain name and DNS settings may be misconfigured.
• DNS does not resolve: You haven’t set up the domain name with any DNS provider.

If your domain name doesn’t resolve to your Acquia application, or if it doesn’t resolve at all, ensure you have followed the instructions in Configuring DNS records for your application.

Cloud Platform can’t determine the status of wildcard (*) domains; it disables the Status link for these domains.

Removing a domain name¶

To remove a domain from an environment:

1. Click Applications > [Environment] > Domain Management.
2. Find the domain you want to delete, and click Remove for that domain.
3. To confirm your selection, click Remove.

Managing your application’s Varnish cache¶

Each domain name associated with your account has its own Varnish cache to speed page access.

If your application supports Varnish caching, clearing these caches ensures that anonymous website visitors get the most up-to-date version of your application after you make any changes.

To clear the Varnish cache for a domain name, click the Clear Caches link for the domain. For more information, see Using Varnish.

Crawling is blocked for acquia-sites.com domains¶

Related topics¶

• Configuring DNS records for your application
• Improving application performance