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Enabling Landing Page Sites

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Cris Echeguren
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In order to design landing pages and blogs in SharpSpring, you need to enable a landing page site. 

This article will detail the process for setting up landing pages for the first time.


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Setting Up Landing Page Sites

If you attempt to access the Landing Page Designer without creating a landing page site, then you will see a message stating that you currently have no landing sites enabled. To enable landing page sites, do the following:

  1. In SharpSpring's top toolbar, click
    New > Site.
  2. Under Short Site Name, enter a name or label for this landing page site.
  3. Under Site Type, select one of the following:

       •   Main Site
       •   Microsite or Brochure
       •   Blog or Informative
       •   Help or Forum
       •   Social
  4. Under Domain Name/URL, enter the domain of your landing page site. 
  5. Click the Make available in Landing Page Builder checkbox.
  6. Click Add Site.

  


Click to enlarge.
Note: Both Short Site Name and Site Type will not be public and will only be used for organizational purposes.
 
Note: The format of this should be subdomain.yourdomain.com.
For example, a blog with a domain of SharpSpring could be blog.sharpspring.com.


Adding Additional Landing Page Sites 

If you want to add an additional landing page site, or you have recently deactivated your original landing page site and want to add a new one, do the following:

  1. In SharpSpring's top toolbar, click
    user.png  User Settings > Settings.
  2. In the left panel, under Tracking, click Sites.
  3. Click  cog.png  Options > Add Site.
  4. Enter the appropriate landing page parameters.
  5. Click the checkbox to mark the new site as available for landing pages.
  6. Click Add Site.
  


Click to enlarge.


Adding CNAME Records

Every landing page will have a default .pages.services attached to the landing page site URL. 


Without CNAME records, this is what your URL looks like:

Link Type   URL Example

Secure
(no CNAME)

   https://pages.services/subdomain.domain.com

Not Secure
(no CNAME)

   http://subdomain.domain.com.pages.services



With CNAME records, this is what your URL looks like:

Link Type   URL Example

Secure
(with CNAME)

   https://subdomain.domain.com 

Not Secure
(with CNAME)

   http://subdomain.domain.com


You will need to add a CNAME record to your tracked site in order to remove the .pages.services within the URL. To add CNAME records, do the following: 

  1. Log in to your domain host.
  2. Locate the host's domain settings, CNAME settings, or DNS management. 
  3. Navigate to where you are able to add CNAME records/aliases.
  4. Enter your landing page subdomain as the host or alias.
  5. Enter pages.services as the value destination or points to link:

    Host/Alias:

    		   subdomain
    Value Destination/
    Points To:    		   pages.services

In addition, you will notice a timestamp (domain.com/landingpage?ts=123...) appended to the end of your landing page URL when you click to visit the live page from the editor. This link parameter is not necessary and can be deleted.

This is a timestamp of that publication and is not intended to be used for sharing purposes. You can delete anything after the question mark (?) in your landing page URLs.

  


Click to enlarge.
Note: A domain host is where your site’s domain is registered. These domain hosts include such hosts like GoDaddy, NameCheap, and BlueHost.
 
Note: Domain settings are sometimes labeled as Manage Domains or DNS Records and may be under advanced settings.

For more information on CNAME records and DKIM implementation, refer to Changing Landing Page URLs.


Accessing Secure Pages

SharpSpring landing pages are secure. To access a secure version of your landing page with the https:// prefix, do the following:

  1. In SharpSpring's top toolbar, click
    Content > Pages.
  2. Create or edit a landing page.
  3. In the left panel, click  file-text.png  Page Settings.
  4. Locate the Funnel URL–Secure field.

The URL in the Funnel URL–Secure field is the URL of the secure landing page. It will change depending on if you have CNAME records set up.

Your new URL will be as follows:

  


Click to enlarge.
Record Type   URL Example

With CNAME

   https://slug.company.com/slug

Without CNAME

   https://pages.services/site.company.com/slug


By default, landing pages created in SharpSpring are secure. They will have the https:// URL prefix. In addition, any asset provided by SharpSpring—media center links, uploaded images, and the like—are, by default, secure. This means that unsecured content is brought in from external sources. As such, you will need to change any unsecured links on your page to secured links.

For more information on how to access a page's secure URL and how to attend to unsecured content on landing pages, refer to Understanding Landing Page Security: HTTP and HTTPS.



Subdomain and Slug Differences

When creating landing pages in SharpSpring, the subdomain is what is used so that you can track your pages and link them to campaigns.

As an example, if you want to set up a campaign to track your promotions the landing page should be set up as something akin to promotions.domain.com. After that, you can set up a campaign to track everything on that subdomain.

Slugs differ from subdomains. The subdomain is defined when you make the site, and it encompasses all pages within the site. The slug is defined when you create the individual landing page.

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