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Getting your site ready to go live

This page outlines the process and requirements for getting a project running on Skpr ready to receive external traffic on a public domain, as well as being able to handle emails correctly.

This document is for users who will be interacting with the project via git and managers interested in how the process works at a high level.

The process

Step 1: Configuring domain names

The first step is letting us know what domains you want to be associated with your application. As well as the www domain (e.g. www.example.com), you may need to identify if an Apex domain is required (e.g. example.com). If so, the Skpr team can add configuration for our redirect solution for Apex domains.

You are required to provide evidence of domain name ownership for the certificate validation process.

So that Amazon Certificate Manager can access the domain successfully with a token, the certificate will be assigned to your domain in the next step.

Step 2: Configuring Mail/SMTP

To send emails from the platform the email address of the sender needs to be verified. You can specify the email.

The requirement is to verify your applications from email address with Amazon SES. To start, you'll need to add the from address to the .skpr/prod.yml file - an example can be found below.

In this example, we've chosen the production environment configuration file because we do not want non-production applications to send mail.

This email address should match the public domain of your application. The user should be something you're happy to expose as it's the email address the contact form will use. For example, you could use admin@example.com or no-reply@example.com.

The administrator will need to be able to access the email address for validation to complete. Please keep this in mind when choosing this email address.

For example:

smtp:
  from:
    address: admin@example.com

After deploying the application, you'll soon receive an email to verify the email in Amazon SES's records. After using the link provided in the email, your application will be able to send an email when the other requirements have been met.

The steps are:

  • Add from email address
  • Receive email
  • Click the link in the email to validate the email address.

If you'd like to learn more about how Skpr integrates with mail, visit our SMTP configuration page.

Step 3: Certificate Provisioning Process

The Skpr team will initiate this process by taking the elected domains and adding them to a new certificate request. The system will routinely attempt to validate the domains after this is created.

Once the DNS record is published, the certificate will be valid and assigned to the domain for that domain's records. It will allow for the handshake to occur.

If you'd like to learn more about how Skpr integrates with the Certificate Provisioning System, you can review our information on certificate provisioning, both Automated and External.

Step 4: Configure your project routes

The platform will look at the production environment's configuration file and manage these for you. In addition to public-facing domains, this list could also include any other domains you want to be routed to the application. This tells the platform how to route web traffic to the application.

.skpr/prod.yaml:

ingress:
  routes:
  - "skpr.com.au"
  - "www.skpr.com.au"

Step 5: Set your CNAME DNS records

The final step is to make sure your DNS records are published. The exact records to configure will be provided to you. However, the typical convention is to create CNAME alias records that point to the applicable example.skpr.live or example.skpr.dev domains.

For example:

Name,Type,Value
www.example.gov.au,CNAME,prod.example.skpr.live

Step 6: Set up your Apex domain (if applicable)

If Apex domains are required, we'll also configure the [redirect (https://www.skpr.com.au/blog/apex-redirect-solution) for the domain will need extra work. There are two parts to this process.

  1. The Skpr team require a certificate for the apex domain
  2. Domain owners can then proceed to add A records to their DNS records.
    The Skpr team will provide the exact details of those records.

For example:

Name,Type,Value
example.gov.au,A,10.0.0.1

More information

We're hoping to streamline this process a lot more in the future, so stay tuned for updates on that. In the meantime, please get in touch with us if you have any questions or need help getting your project on Skpr to go live!

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