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Testing via Temp Subdomains (Our Vanity Domains)

Nexcess allows customers to leverage vanity subdomains for website testing purposes. So, vanity domains within Nexcess hosting plans are actually temporary subdomains under the primary domain.
Applications Nexcess Sylius
4 min read

Vanity domains within Nexcess hosting plans aren’t the typical your-vanity-domain-here.com domains, but rather, they are temporary subdomains belonging to your primary domain that can be used for testing purposes.

Overview

Nexcess allows customers to leverage vanity subdomains for website testing purposes. First of all, let’s outline the differences between a vanity domain (primary domain), a vanity subdomain, a vanity subdirectory, and a vanity URL path.

The vanity portion can be used in any portion of your full URL as it is constructed. Below are some examples using pseudocode:

  • Vanity Domain (Primary Domain) = your-vanity-domain-here.com
  • Vanity Subdomain = your-vanity-subdomain-here. standard-domain.com
  • Vanity Subdirectory = standard-domain.com/your-vanity-subdirectory-here/
  • Vanity URL Path = standard-subdomain.standard-domain.com/standard-subdirectory/your-vanity-url-path-here

Domain setup at Nexcess

The main emphasis of this article is to inform our customers that Nexcess vanity domains are not the general type of a vanity domain. Within the Nexcess hosting plans, vanity domains are subdomains of the nxcli.net domain and represent a temporary domain that can be used to test a website that’s not yet ready to go fully live. There are also CNAME targets, made using a random string of letters and numbers, while vanity subdomains are easier to remember and use.

Vanity URL path, subdirectory, subdomain, and domain examples

Before we get into the details around vanity subdomains, here are some examples of the different parts of a URL. For our use case below, let’s assume your website’s primary domain name is greatwebsitename.com:

  • Your vanity domain would be greatwebsitename.com.
  • Your vanity subdomain would be johndoe.greatwebsitename.com.
  • Your vanity subdirectory would be greatwebsitename.com/johndoe/
  • Your vanity URL path could be greatwebsitename.com/subdirectory/johndoe

Testing vanity subdomains at Nexcess

Within Nexcess hosting plans, WordPress/WooCommerce customers can test vanity subdomains using a Nexcess staging website or dev environment if they prefer. At Nexcess, every managed WordPress/WooCommerce plan comes with a complimentary staging website. If you’re new to Nexcess, read our guide to setting up a Nexcess staging environment.

If you use a staging environment, you can keep your production website untouched while testing vanity subdomains on your staging website. Temporary subdomains can be used to test a website at Nexcess, which may be easier to use than CNAME targets, which are random strings of letters and numbers.

Step by step instructions

  1. Log in to my.nexcess.net. Make sure you have your Nexcess Client Portal login information at hand. This was first provided in your welcome email from Nexcess. If you cannot to locate this information, click the Forgot Password? link on the login screen.
  2. After logging in, you must first choose the right hosting plan and click on the website you wish to modify. You can change your live website or its staging environment at this stage.
  3. Once you’ve accessed the site dashboard, navigate to the Domain section.
  4. Here, you’ll see a pointer domain already added. In our example, this is the presentsnakes.nxcli.net domain. That’s the Nexcess vanity domain (nxcli.net) and vanity subdomain (presentsnakes).
  5. Since presentsnakes.nxcli.net is already the pointer domain, you won’t be able to add it as your master domain, but you’ll be able to add it as the base URL for your site. In this example, we’re dealing with a WordPress website, so the change must be implemented using the WordPress Command Line Interface, known as WP-CLI.
  1. First, we’ll need to confirm the original site URL:
[a5be6a2c@cloudhost-2641592 html]$ wp option get siteurl
https://f34834bf71.nxcli.net

We also can do this by typing this URL into a web browser.

  1. Now that we’ve confirmed the original site’s domain and subdomain, we can change it using the wp search-replace command:
[a5be6a2c@cloudhost-2641592 html]$ wp search-replace --all-tables "//f34834bf71.nxcli.net" "//presentsnakes.nxcli.net"
[a5be6a2c@cloudhost-2641592 html]$ wp cache flush
Success: The cache was flushed.

Once we’ve flushed the cache, we can access the website using the new vanity subdomain (presentsnakes).

We can also confirm this change using the wp option command:

[a5be6a2c@cloudhost-2641592 html]$ wp option get siteurl
https://presentsnakes.nxcli.net

Conclusion

In the context of Nexcess hosting, temporary subdomains belonging to your primary domain that can be used for testing with an easy-to-remember URL. All Nexcess managed Magento, WordPress, or WooCommerce plans include a single vanity domain per website.

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