Custom Domains for Your Help Center

Advice and answers from the Creabl Team
Written by Dima Venglinski
Updated 2 years ago
When you turn on your Articles Help Center, your content is available through helpcenter.creabl.com by default. Your URL will look like this: helpcenter.creabl.com/yoursite
If you’d like to use a different URL, you can create one by setting up a custom domain.

You can do so by:
Enter your custom domain in Settings > Help center > Advanced settings
Create a custom CNAME record
Choosing to configure SSL
Using your own SSL certificate with Apache or Nginx
Enter your custom domain in Settings > Help center > 
Advanced settings
Enter the custom domain you want to use in your Help Center settings in Articles. Let’s use "help.yoursite.com" as an example:


And press “Save changes”
Create a custom CNAME record
Go to your DNS provider’s website (e.g. GoDaddy or Cloudflare). If you’re choosing one for the first time, go with one that supports SSL.
Create a CNAME (‘canonical name’) record for your custom domain.
Point it at Creabl’s host domain: helpcenter.creabl.com


And press “Save”
Choose to configure SSL
After you set up a custom domain, your Help Center will be hosted on your domain, but on HTTP rather than HTTPS. Your Help Center will now appear as ‘not secure’ on web browsers like Chrome Here’s how to secure it.
SSL (or TLS), is the most widely used way to secure the connection between your server and your browser. It ensures the connection between the server and browser is encrypted and safe, and appears as HTTPS.
There are two ways to set up SSL with Articles on your custom domain:
Use a flexible SSL (using a third party DNS provider like CloudFlare or AWS CloudFront)
Use your own SSL certificate (using a TLS Termination Proxy)
You can configure SSL for your custom domain to keep sensitive information encrypted. If you want to do this, make sure you’ve set up your CNAME with a DNS provider that supports SSL, like Cloudflare.
Using your own SSL certificate with Apache or Nginx
The SSL certificate used by your Help Center is a shared certificate signed by your DNS provider. It uses SNI (Server Name Indication) to secure your site.
If you wish to host your own security certificates, you can do so through a TLS termination proxy. You’ll need to edit the configuration file on your proxy web server.
Note: If you created a CNAME record that points to helpcenter.creabl.com, you'll need to delete this to host your own SSL certificate.
Here are the basic instructions to set up your own SSL using Apache and Nginx web servers:
apache.conf
# Prerequisites: mod_ssl, mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http should be enabled
# Step 1: Acquire an SSL certificate and private key (e.g. LetsEncrypt.org)
# Step 2: Set up Apache proxy settings, example below.
# Step 3: Set custom domain in Creabl Help Center settings
# Step 4: Make sure your custom domain's DNS record resolves to your Apache server
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName yoursite.com # specify your custom domain here
# Set SSL options for your own domain
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/your/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/your/privatekey.pem
# Proxy SSL options
SSLProxyEngine on
SSLProxyVerifyDepth 10
SSLProxyCheckPeerCN off
SSLProxyCheckPeerName on
# Set up the reverse proxy to Creabl
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyPass / https://helpcenter.creabl.com/
ProxyPassReverse / https://helpcenter.creabl.com/
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

nginx.conf
# Prerequisites: ngx_http_ssl_module and ngx_http_proxy_module should be enabled
# Step 1: set up normal server with HTTPS https://letsencrypt.org/
# Step 2: set up proxy settings as shown below
# Step 3: set custom domain in Creabl Help Center settings
# Step 4: make sure your DNS record is configured to IP of your Nginx server
resolver 8.8.8.8; # use own DNS server if you have one
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name your-help-site.custom-domain.com; # replace this with your domain
ssl_certificate /path/to/your/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/your/privatekey.pem;
location / {
# using "set" is important as IP addresses of Creabl servers
# changes dynamically. "set" enables nginx to follow dynamic IPs
set $creabl "https://helpcenter.creabl.com:443";
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_pass $creabl;
}
}


There are many ways to set up your own SSL certificate - we can’t guarantee that we can support every type of proxy setup. If you have specific needs, we can't support you in configuring it.

Note that you may also need to add redirects from HTTP protocol (port 80) to HTTPS as part of your server configuration.

While most modern browsers support SNI, a few older ones don’t. If you’re supporting those browsers, you should use your own SSL certificate instead. Check with your DNS provider to see if this option is available.
Thanks! We appreciate your feedback 🤘