http://yourdomain.com
http://www.yourdomain.com
http://track.yourdomain.com
http://yourdomain.com/recommends/
yourdomain.com
or a subdomain such as track.yourdomain.com
as your tracking domain, you’ll want to set up your custom domain using the a CNAME DNS record, explained here:![]() |
What is the recommended way to set up a custom domain? |
yourdomain.com/recommends/
subdirectory style, you’ll need to set up your tracking domain using Script Forwarding with your own server, and that set up process is explained below.![]() |
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Create a Custom Domain Using Script Forwarding |
1. | Set up a server Unless you already have your own server, you’ll need to sign up for a decent Linux VPS or cloud server plan with a dedicated IP address. Expect to pay no more than \$10-\$20 USD a month for this. You don’t absolutely need a dedicated IP address but it’ll help you get the best email deliverability possible if you’ll be running email campaigns from your server. All VPS and cloud server accounts should come with a dedicated IP address. We do NOT recommend using a cheap shared hosting plan. Shared hosting plans can lose clicks due to their overburdened servers, and can also cause visitors to click away from your offers before they see anything because pages pull up so slowly. Our advice—don’t risk it! |
2. | Create your customized settings files We have a Setup Wizard to help you generate the custom files: Launch the Setup Wizard. The Setup Wizard will generate a compressed file called $username.zip that you can download. |
3. | Upload the compressed file to a subdirectory in your hosting account. First create a new subdirectory on your domain, such as yourdomain.com/recommends/ , then upload the file $username.zip to the directory.Once uploaded, use your file manager or FTP program to extract the $username.zip file. This should create two additional files:htaccess index.php If your file manager or FTP program can’t extract the file, you can extract the file before uploading, then separately upload the two files shown above. |
4. | Rename the file named htaccess to .htaccess You simply need to rename the htaccess file so that it starts with a period (. ).If for some reason you can’t add a period to the start of the filename, it’s most likely caused by a setting somewhere in your hosting account file manager. In this case, you’ll need to contact your hosting company and they’ll tell you how to change the filename. |
5. | Add your new domain to your ClickMagick account using the Domain Manager which you can find in the Tools menu. Be sure to enter the full URL, including the subdirectory. For example, if you created the subdirectory /recommends and you uploaded your files there, the full tracking domain would be:yourdomain.com/recommends When you attempt to add your tracking domain to the Domain Manager, you may get an error saying that the domain can’t be found. Just read the error message and follow any instructions. When you create a new domain, it can take 1 to 24 hours for the domain to become active on the Internet. If you get an error when you try to add the domain to the Domain Manager, just wait a bit and try again. |
.htaccess
files in the directory you uploaded the files to..htaccess
files in XYZ directory [the directory where you uploaded the files] but it’s not working. Can you take a look or let me know how to enable .htaccess
files in this directory?”video
, you would reference that link using your custom domain like this: http://yourdomain.com/recommends/video
/video
, you will be told that the “Link ID is missing from that URL.” That’s perfectly normal behavior and there is nothing wrong with your custom domain.![]() |
How do I troubleshoot my custom domain setup? |