Overview

MetaCDN gives you the option to use your own domain or subdomain in place of the MetaCDN generated Accelerated Domain using a process called CNAME mapping. For example, let's assume you have a website with the domain www.example.com. We refer to this as the Origin Domain, where we 'pull' your content from. Once you have accelerated your site, you are given an Accelerated Domain such as example.metacdn.sa.com. When setting up your Site, you had the option to add a CNAME such as cdn.example.com. This lets you use your own domain name (cdn.example.com) for links to your objects throughout your site instead of using the domain name that MetaCDN assigns to your site (example.sa.metacdn.com). Consider the example below:

As noted in the screenshot, you can configure up to 9 optional CNAME aliases for a single Site.

Mapping the CNAME

There is one final step required, to adjust your DNS settings to map your desired domain to the MetaCDN accelerated domain. In the above example, cdn.example.com is an alias for the canonical name (CNAME) example.sa.metacdn.com. A client will request cdn.example.com. and the answer will be example.sa.metacdn.com. The instructions to make this change will vary depending on your DNS hosting provider. Generically, they are as follows:

1. Sign in to the domain host's administrative console for your domain.
2. Locate the page on which you can update the domain DNS records.
3. The page might be called something like DNS Management, Name Server Management, or Advanced Settings.
4. Locate the CNAME records for your domain (e.g. example.com)
5. Update the existing CNAME record (e.g. cdn.example.com) to include the value / answer / destination of the Accelerated Domain (e.g. example.sa.metacdn.com). Create new CNAME record if it does not exist already (e.g. for node cdn for domain example.com).
6. Save your changes and wait until they take effect.
7. Be aware it may take up to 72 hours before changes are propagated, depending on the TTL that was configured for your CNAME records.