Launching Your Site

Our team is always willing to help launch your site during our business hours. If you manage your own DNS and are feeling confident to launch your site yourself, please follow these instructions.

Who Needs to be Involved

You will require these people to be involved:

• The Account Owner to access your site’s SiteWrench Account Panel. Only their SiteWrench username can access this page: yourdomain.sitewrench.com/admin/account/
• The IT person who controls your DNS records for your domains
• If you desire, the SiteWrench Support team to assist with launch

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SiteWrench Account Panel View

You can find the Account Panel by navigating to the top right avatar and selecting “Account Settings.”

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Step 1 - Preparing for Launch

IT person’s responsibilities:

• If possible, a few days before launch, set your TTL (time to live) value as low as you can go. In most cases this is 30 minutes or 1800 seconds.
  • This will shorten the propagation time, which otherwise can take up to 48 hours for the whole internet to see your new site live.
• Take Screenshots of your existing DNS records where your records are hosted, just so you have a record in case you need to reset it and revert launch.

SiteWrench Account Owner responsibilities:

• Your IP is listed within your SiteWrench Account panel, and it is supplied to you by the SiteWrench Support team prior to your launch.
  • The IP address for your site is: 40.119.1.254
• Add your Google Analytics code here: yourdomain.sitewrench.com/admin/settings/analytics.aspx
  • If you do not currently have one, set up your own Google Analytics account

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Step 2 - DNS adjustments (for the IT person)

• Create (or change) an "A Record" to point your www domain (ex: www.yourdomain.com) to 40.119.1.254
• Create (or change) an "A Record" to point your naked domain (ex: yourdomain.com) to 40.119.1.254

yourdomain.com 300 IN A 40.119.1.254
www.yourdomain.com 300 IN 40.119.1.254

We recommend using www. More info here http://www.yes-www.org/.

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Step 3 - Add your Domains to SiteWrench (for the Account Owner)

• Set your domains up on your site’s Account Panel in the My Domains section: yourdomain.sitewrench.com/admin/account/
  • Be sure when adding your domain, that you do not add the website address with http://www. For example, if we were adding http://www.speakcreative.com to our account we would just enter speakcreative.com as our system will handle the www. instance.
• If you have multiple domains, you can either have each domain point to the SiteWrench site by adjusting their IP’s, or you can forward your other domains to point to your primary domain within your domain registrar panel. If you are unsure how this is set up, check with your IT person.
  • If you choose to point each domain to the SiteWrench site, those domains must be set up in the SiteWrench Account Panel in the domains section. From there you can tell the domain to point to the home page or a particular subpage.
  • If you choose to forward your other domains to point to your primary domain, you do not need to add them to your SiteWrench Account Panel.

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Step 4 - Turn your site Online (for the Account Owner)

• Under Site Status in your Account Panel, set your site to "Online."
  • Select “Yes” when it asks you to confirm if you want to set your site online.

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Congratulations, your site is ready to be live!

Now you can access your site through your live domain instead of your SiteWrench subdomain: yourdomain.com/admin/account/

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Why I can’t see my new site yet when I go to my domain?

The internet needs time to recognize this change. It can take 48 hours for the whole internet to propagate and see your site.

• It’s possible that different website visitors around the country will see the new live site, while some will see the old site. Use this tool to see where in the world people are seeing the new SiteWrench IP you set up: https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/
• For this reason, we recommend not canceling your old site’s hosting until a few days after your new site has launched.

Your work network may have an internal DNS record for your website that needs to be updated as well. Check with your IT group to confirm.

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I Need Some Additional Help

• Please submit a support ticket from your website. Login to the Admin and use the green support widget.
  
• Tickets are actively monitored during our normal office hours: Monday-Thursday: 7 am - 5 pm CT, Friday: 7 am - 11 am CT

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