Use a custom domain with your knowledge base

Your external Front knowledge base comes with a built-in domain through frontkb.com. By default, your knowledge base URL will display as [yourcompany].frontkb.com. If you’d like to use a custom URL (e.g. help.[yourcompany].com) with your knowledge base, you can set up a custom domain. Once your custom domain is set up, you can configure article redirects.

You must have Front company admin or Knowledge Base admin permissions to manage knowledge base domain settings. This is advanced material that would best be done by an IT admin.

• You must have a primary subdomain added to the Domains tab in your Front knowledge base.

• You must have a registered custom domain with a domain registrar. e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.

• You must have access to your domain's DNS configuration and DNS settings. This may or may not be at the domain registrar.

• A custom domain cannot be an apex domain.

  • Supported: www.acme.org, kb.acme.org, kb.help.acme.org

  • Unsupported: acme.org 

• A knowledge base can have up to two custom domains.

• If there is one custom domain, it can be either set as the primary or as a redirect to the primary.

• If there are two custom domains, one must be primary and the other must be a redirect. This allows zero downtime cutover from one custom domain to another.

• You must verify ownership of the domain before it can be used as a primary domain.

Follow the steps for Parts 1-2 a few days before you intend to launch your new knowledge base. This will not affect what customers see when they access your domain.

Step 1

In Front, navigate to the Domains tab in your knowledge base Settings and click Add custom domain.

Step 2

Enter the custom domain you’d like to use, then click Add. The custom domain will be added with an “Unverified” status. 

Step 3

To verify that you own the custom domain, copy the values in Front and add a CNAME record in your DNS settings. 

Step 4

In your DNS settings, create a CNAME record for your custom domain. In general:

• Name: The value copied from the Host column in the Front custom domain page

• Type: CNAME

• Value: The value copied from the Required column in the Front custom domain page

• TTL: 60

Each DNS provider offers a different UI to add this entry to the DNS (e.g. GoDaddy, Cloudflare). Please ask your IT department if you're unsure how to do this. 

Step 5

Navigate back to Front and click Verify. The custom domain status will change from “Unverified” to “Provisioning”. Front will automatically request an SSL/TLS certificate and begin provisioning the domain on our servers. This may take up to 30 minutes to complete. You’ll see a green check mark once this is successful.

In some cases, the status may still say “Unverified” if the DNS change takes a while to propagate and be recognized (up to 72 hours). If this happens, please wait and try again later. 

If your Top Level Domain has existing Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) records, this will prevent Front's Certification Authority from automatically granting you a TLS certificate. To fix this, see the troubleshooting section below.

Step 6

You can click Refresh status at the top of the page to see the current status of the domain, status of the SSL/TLS certificate, and status of the domain’s DNS configuration.

Follow the steps for Part 3 at the time you intend to launch your new knowledge base. These steps will affect what people see when they visit your domain - it redirects traffic to your knowledge base.

Step 7

Once the domain and SSL/TLS certificate are fully provisioned, your custom domain status will change from “Provisioning” to “Redirect”. You’ll then need to add a second CNAME record in your DNS settings to direct traffic from your custom domain to your Front knowledge base subdomain.

Step 8

Copy the values in Front and add a second CNAME record in your DNS settings (repeat Steps 4-6 with these new values).

Step 9

Click Refresh status to confirm that the “Required” and “Current” columns match. It may take a few minutes for the DNS change to propagate.

Step 10

Once your DNS records are correctly configured, your custom domain status will change from “Redirect” to “Primary”. Click Go live at the top of your knowledge base settings to publish your knowledge base.

If you don't have any CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) records set up for your domain, your Knowledge Base custom domain should be registered by default. Check if you have any CAA records for your domain by running dig CAA example.com in the console, replacing example.com with your domain.

If you do have existing CAA records, this will block Front from automatically registering a TLS certificate for your custom domain. As of August 2024 we have transitioned from Let's Encrypt to Certainly as our Certification Authority (CA) for issuing TLS certificates. Please add certainly.com to your existing CAA records in your DNS settings to allow Front to register a TLS certificate for your custom domain.

You will need to add the certainly.com CAA record at the same level as your existing CAA records or at a more specific level related to your Knowledge Base custom domain. Note that you cannot add a CAA record for a subdomain that already has a CNAME record, as CNAME and CAA records cannot coexist.

For example:

• If your domain is help.example.com, you should add the CAA record to example.com.

• If your domain is customers.help.example.com, you can add the CAA record to help.example.com or example.com if help.example.com doesn't have any CAA records.

Using custom domains with Front Knowledge Base is available on the latest Growth plan or above.

If you are on a legacy plan and don't have access to this feature, you can update to one of our latest plans in your Billing settings or contact your account manager.