PROVISION

Host Open edX in your own domain

This guide will explain the steps to configure the Open edX platform to publish the Learning site or LMS in your own domain. This is a key step towards delivering your own online courses.

The steps below are meant for initiatives that are using eduNEXT’s Cloud subscriptions powered by Open edX and who already upgraded the subscription to a paid version. If you are running Open edX in a different way (for example in your own installation) you’ll need to follow the Open edX official documentation instead.

For the purpose of this guide, we will assume that:

– You have an active Cloud subscription with eduNEXT
– You already own an internet domain (we will call it “youracademy.com”) and have access to the domain admin console.
– You are familiar with the very basics of DNS configurations.
– You have already decided about the specific domain you want to use for your learning site, for example www.youracademy.com or courses.youracademy.com

The basic process will entail 3 steps:

1. Accessing your domain DNS manager.
2. Adding one DNS record to direct the traffic towards eduNEXT servers.
3. Informing the eduNEXT support team about your configuration.

Let's dive in

1.Access your domain DNS manager

The place to manage the DNS records for a domain is normally in the admin console of the registrar you purchased the domain registration from. (for example domain.com, godaddy.com, namecheap.com, bluehost.com, google domains, etc). Make sure you log in to the admin console given by your specific provider and look for the section to manage the DNS records. (It’s often called DNS manager, DNS admin, DNS zones manager).

2. Add one DNS record

All you need to do is to add one or two DNS records to your configuration, depending on the domain you are choosing:

Option 1. A subdomain: courses.youracademy.com

In this case, you need to add a CNAME record to the domain you want with the following settings:

Subdomain : courses (or whatever subdomain you are choosing)
Value : secure-la.edunext.co
Type of record : CNAME
TTL : 14400

Option 2. The naked domain: youracademy.com

In case you want to have the open edX site in the main domain, we recommend to create two DNS records:

1) one A record for the naked domain “@” pointing to 52.38.30.184

Subdomain : @
Value : 52.38.30.184
Type of record : A
TTL : 14400

2) one CNAME record for www pointing to secure-la.edunext.co. This will prevent your users to get lost if they accidentally use www.youracademy.com

Subdomain : www
Value : secure-la.edunext.co
Type of record : CNAME
TTL : 14400

3. Informing eduNEXT

Once you’ve made your changes, make sure to inform the eduNEXT support team of the domain or subdomain that you configured so that all the configurations can be tested and applied to production. You can do so by opening a support ticket with this information here.

Keep in mind that the propagation of the DNS information over the internet may take a few hours, so your changes may not be reflected immediately in the service, but they will be reflected as soon as the propagation is done and the eduNEXT support team receives your information and applies the configurations.

Can I use my own SSL certificate?

If you have already purchased an SSL certificate for all their online services and do not wish to use the SSL certificate that eduNEXT provides free of charge, you can also coordinate with the eduNEXT support team as explained below. If you don’t have your own SSL certificate you may simply ignore this section and your site will still be delivered securely over https encryption.

In case you want to use your own SSL certificate, the procedure will be as follows:

1. Request over a support ticket the creation of a CSR file (This is a certificate signing Request file – xxx.csr) for the type of SSL certificate that you plan to use.
2. Once you receive the xxx.csr file, proceed to sign the certificate and send it back to the eduNEXT support team.
3. The eduNEXT team will take care of the configurations.

Ready to take your online learning to the next step?

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