Subdomains are a common way for web sites to organize traffic between different servers and applications. A subdomain is the first part of domain name, and it can be configured to send site traffic to Rally Congress servers. This enables Rally Congress pages to seamlessly fit as part of a larger organizational web site.

NOTE: This feature is optional. The benefit of mapping a subdomain is that site visitors see your top-level domain name at every step of their advocacy experience. However, subdomain mapping is totally optional with Rally Congress -- every account already has a default web address at rallycongress.net that is ready to use and has SSL/TLS security built in.

Step 1: Choose a Subdomain

A subdomain should be a single word or short phrase. The lower case letters "a"--"z", numbers, and the characters plus ("+"), period ("."), and hyphen ("-") are allowed, and all letters should be lower case.

Common subdomains are "action", "advocacy", "congress", but you can use whatever makes the most sense for your organization. The subdomain www is a special case, learn how to host a complete web site with Rally Congress.

The subdomain cannot be in use for any other applications or services.

For technical reasons, mapping traffic to a subdirectory, such as your-advocacy-site.com/advocacy, will not work.

Step 2: Create the Subdomain with your Registrar

Once you've decided on a subdomain, add a CNAME record through the registrar where you purchased your domain or through your DNS provider. Do NOT change any existing Name Server information.

The CNAME should look something like the following (please note the "period" character at the end of each domain name):

Instructions on adding a CNAME record can vary between domain registrars. If you’re unsure of how to do this, we recommend contacting your domain registrar for assistance with this step. Here's a sample email you can send (replace the example subdomain and rallycongress.com address given with your own subdomain and address):

I would like to map a subdomain of my domain to the service Rally Congress, which is hosted at rallycongress.com. I want to use the subdomain action.your-advocacy-site.com. Can you please add a CNAME record to point that subdomain to example.rallycongress.com?

Step 3: Check if the CNAME is working

Once the CNAME record has been added and verified with your registrar, type the new subdomain into a browser address bar, and you'll see a "coming soon" welcome page from Rally Congress.

NOTE: If you get a Redirect Loop error page try waiting a few seconds and then refreshing the page.

Step 4: Activate the CNAME with Rally Congress

Login to your Rally Congress control panel and go to "Account Settings"--> "Domain Names" to add and activate the mapped domain.

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TECHNICAL NOTES: The subdomain www is a special case and means that Rally Congress will serve ALL website traffic for that domain name. This is supported, and the www subdomain is set up in the same way. Additionally, you will need to take the step of routing the apex "your-advocacy-site.com" to redirect to "www" with your registrar or DNS service.

Related-- a subdomain like "www.advocacy.your-advocacy-site.com" will not work because there are two different subdomains present.