Getting started with a custom domain Business

This guide shows how to setup a custom domain for Kuula Business subscriptions.

Kuula offers a custom domain that is based a white-listed domain called viewin360.co. This comes with the Busiess plan at no extra charge and you can use it instead of your custom domain or in addition to it. For more details, please scroll to the end of this article.

1. Choose a domain

If you do not already own a domain, you can buy one, provided that it is available, of course. There are a lot of different domain registering services on the web. You can refer to the list at the end of this article for links to the most popular ones.

After purchasing a domain name, you can decide to either use the top level domain for your Business subscription or use a subdomain. For example, if your domain name is mycompany.com, you can either use that or create a dedicated subdomain such as 360.mycompany.com or tours.mycompany.com.

If you already have a domain and a website hosted under this domain, then the subdomain option is recommended if you want to keep current website you have.

Depending on which option you choose, the DNS (Domain Name Service) setup will be a bit different.

2a. DNS setup for top level domain

If you want to use your top level domain (i.e. mycompany.com) you will need to redirect the domain to the Kuula servers using a A type record in DNS. The A record needs to point to the following IP address:

54.88.87.148

2b. DNS setup for subdomains

If you want to use a subdomain (ex. tours.mycompany.com) you will need to add a CNAME type record to your DNS settings and it needs to point to:

pages.kuula.co

Please refer to the list at the end of this article to find tutorials on how to manage & edit DNS records for some popular domain registars.

2c. Checking the setup

After making the changes in DNS, you can check if the settings are correct using the Google Dig tool.

On that page, enter your domain name in the top of the page and check the following:

There is only one A or CNAME record in your zone file. If you had any previous records pointing to other IPs and servers, those need to be removed.
There are no AAAA record for your domain. Those record define IPv6 adresses and are not supported by Kuula at this point. Any existing AAAA records need to be removed.
Other type of records - such as MX or TXT - don't need to be modified. You can also set them to any value that you need later on without impacting the Kuula setup.

Please note that changes in DNS may not be visible immediately. Due to DNS propagation, you may need to wait for several hours, up to 24 in some cases, before the new records are visible.

3. Add the domain to your website

Now that you redirected the domain, you can add it to your website settings. In order to do this, navigate to the Website Editor and login using your Kuula credentials. Once in the editor, go to Settings and select the Domains tab. It should look similar to this:

To add your custom domain, use the Add custom domain button in the top/right. Once you add it, our system will test the domain to see if it is correctly setup. If there are any problems, they will be reported on the screen along with some troubleshooting instructions, otherwise the test will be marked as passed.

The secure protocol (HTTPS/SSL) is activated after the DNS setup is complete. This may take up to 24 hours. In the meantime, you can access your website using a fallback domain.

If all test pass - your domain is ready to use! You can get direct links or embed codes to all your tours and posts by following this tutorial. You can also start building your website. To get started, please follow this tutorial.

Appendix: DNS tutorials

Below is a list of article showing how to modify DNS settings for some of the popular domain registars.

If your domain register is not on this list, please let us know. We will find the appropriate articles & tutorials and add them.

The white-listed viewin360.co domain

Kuula also offers a custom domain that is based a white-listed domain called viewin360.co. This comes with the Business plan at no extra charge and you can use it instead of your custom domain or in addition to it.

The domain is active as soon as you upgrade to Business and doesn't require any additional setup. It takes the form of username.viewin360.co where the first part is your user name on Kuula. For example if your user name is john360 the domain will be:

john360.viewin360.co

Due to a browser limitation on mobile phones, domain names can not include the underscore character ( _ ).

Kuula allows to use this character in user names. However, if you intend to use viewin360.co links, please make sure your user name does not contain any underscores. If needed, you can change your user name on the Profile Settings page.

That domain is always active whenever your Business account is active, regardless of the custom domain setup.