Launching Your New Frontend Store

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Introduction

This guide will walk you through the steps to prepare your Shopify or BigCommerce stores for a successful launch.

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Before You Plan To Launch

Check in with your Implementation Manager or Customer Success Manager for more information on our QA and Launch Readiness Checklists.

Getting Started

Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with how to manage records with your domain provider.

GoDaddy
Cloudflare
  • Manage DNS records
  • Ensure Proxy Status for each record is set to DNS Only
  • If you are using Cloudflare DNS, ensure Universal SSL is turned off

Pre-Launch and Launch Day Steps

Launch steps are broken up into Pre-launch (at least 1 business day prior to your launch dat) and Launch Day steps.

Pre-launch Day Steps

  1. Confirm launch date and time with your Implementation Manager

  2. Reduce TTL (time to live) of their current DNS records to the minimum possible

    1. GODaddy - Custom 600 sec
    2. Cloudflare - Auto

  3. Create SSL Certification for CNAME

  4. Your Implementation Manager will provide you with this unique value
    i.e: how this will appear. UI will differ depending on your domain provider

  5. Check that this CNAME was properly configured using https://www.whatsmydns.net/

Launch Day

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The Shogun team will perform a Domain Switch on Launch Day. Do not proceed with any of the below steps until your Implementation Manager confirms this step has been completed.

Shopify

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Persist Users Logged State

Under your Shopify Settings, ensure reCaptcha is DISABLED for account logins. More info here.

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Step 1 is required to populate the SSL Certificate on Shopify's side for the cart.
Step 1 can be skipped if the domain is already connected to Shopify

  1. Connect domain to Shopify store. Make sure the SSL is verified on Shopify’s end before proceeding
    1. Connecting a third-party domain to Shopify https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/domains/add-a-domain/connecting-domains
      Skip to 2:27 to manually edit your DNS settings
  2. Create the following records
    1. Add A Records for [email protected] as follows:
      1. @ IN A 151.101.1.51
      2. @ IN A 151.101.65.51
      3. @ IN A 151.101.129.51
      4. @ IN A 151.101.193.51
    2. Add a CNAME Record for [email protected] as follows:
      1. www IN CNAME ecp.map.fastly.net.
    3. Remove any A or CNAME records pointing to Shopify
  3. Publish Store. At this point, your store should be live!
  4. QA your store
  5. Add Robots.txt - after this step, search engines will be able to search the site
    1. Log into Shogun Frontend
    2. Click on the Setting Icon on the side menu
    3. Under the General Tab, you will see an input for robots.txt
  6. Publish Store once more

BigCommerce

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Change DNS Management

If you are using Big Commerce Big Commerce DNS management, you will need to move Big Commerce DNS management back to their original domain registrar management (GoDaddy, DNSimple, etc).

  1. Create the following records
    1. Add A Records for [email protected] as follows:
      1. @ IN A 151.101.1.51
      2. @ IN A 151.101.65.51
      3. @ IN A 151.101.129.51
      4. @ IN A 151.101.193.51
    2. add a CNAME Record for [email protected] as follows:
      1. www IN CNAME ecp.map.fastly.net.
  2. Remove any A and CNAME records pointing to BigCommerce
  3. Publish Store. At this point, your store should be live!
  4. QA your store
  5. REQUIRED Set Up Origin Domain
    1. Add CNAME record origin.domain.com pointed to store-{hash}.mybigcommerce.com (permanent store url).
    2. Change store url in a management panel to origin.domain.com
  6. Add Robots.txt - after this step, search engines will be able to search the site
  7. Publish Store once more

Updated 7 months ago