Setting up a custom domain is a great way to showcase your brand when sharing links to things like your portfolio, package, or public bookings. This guide will take you through the steps required for using custom domains on your public portfolio, packages, and booking pages.
Setting up a Custom.bookfocal.com Domain (Starter and Partner Plans)
Custom.bookfocal.com domains are available for all Focal plans. Setting one will allow you to have a custom Focal domain (e.g. oohoohdarling.bookfocal.com) on all of your public Portfolio, Package, and Booking pages, instead of the default app.bookfocal domains. To set up your custom.bookfocal domain, follow these steps:
Navigate to the 'Domains' tab of your Focal dashboard.
Enter your desired 'custom' .bookfocal subdomain.
Click 'Save Changes'.
A 'Success' badge will display. Please wait a moment for the page to reload.
The URL will now show your updated custom.bookfocal domain.
Setting up a Custom.yourdomain.com Domain (Partner Plan Only)
Configuring DNSĀ Settings
Custom.yourdomain.com domains are available only to Partner Plan subscribers. Setting one will allow you to have a custom.yourdomain.com domain (e.g. booking.oohoohdarling.com) on all of your public Portfolio, Package, and Booking pages, instead of your custom.bookfocal.com or the default app.bookfocal.com domain.
To set up your custom.yourdomain domain, follow these steps:
Navigate to the 'Domains' tab of your Focal dashboard.
Enter your desired 'customsubdomain.yourdomain.com'. You will see some additional setup information (see image below).
Now that you have the information you need to configure your website host DNS settings, navigate to your website's DNSĀ settings page.
If you click the 'Detailed Help Guides' dropdown, we have included help links for common web hosts (e.g. Squarespace, Wix).
You will now need to add a CNAME record to your DNS settings.
For the 'Host / Name', it may depend on your hosting provider. Some require you to write the whole domain (e.g. booking.lachlanphotography.com), while others may only require the subdomain: booking
For the TTL, set it to 3600, 5m or 'Default'.
For the Type, select 'CNAME'.
For the 'Record / Points to / Target', you will need to enter 'customer.bookfocal.com' exactly. Do not enter 'yourcustomdomain.bookfocal.com' or anything else besides what is in bold above.
Click 'Save Changes'. It may take up to 48 hours for your custom domain to update.
Check your customsubdomain.yourdomain.com, and it will open your Portfolio page!
We recommend connecting Focal as an Investment or Booking page to your website in order to increase your customer conversion rate. We've found that photographers who use Focal's packages for their Investments page quintuple their bookings.
To do this, simply add a menu item in your website navigation bar linking to 'yourcustomdomain.bookfocal.com'. You can also add call to action buttons on your website that link to a specific package page.
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