Custom Domain Names

Although each School Loop site comes with its own unique address, we highly recommend that you point your existing custom domain name(s) to your School Loop sites. Instead of surfing to an address such as http://abc-xyz-ca.schoolloop.com, you could be using an address such as http://www.district.com. District employees, students, parents and your community already know your web address; why make them learn another?

GoDaddy users, check out these instructions for forwarding the root domain.1. Send us a list of your domains (up to 3 per site) so that we may configure our system to direct incoming traffic to the appropriate site.

2. Create a CNAME record for each sub domain and point all of them to cms.sl-host.com.

Please note that each site must have its own domain or sub domain address. We cannot support an address such as http://www.district.com/school. For example, if the district domain is www.district.k12.ca.us, the subdomain for a school might be school.district.k12.ca.us

Root Domains

For security reasons we do not support the use of A records for root domains (also know as the apex or naked domain). Please choose one of the following options for your root domain:

• If supported by your DNS server or domain registrar, redirect/forward the root domain to a sub domain (e.g. www) that has a CNAME record.
• Use a redirection service such as wwwizer.com.
• Point to a page on your own system that uses a meta refresh to redirect users to a sub domain with a CNAME record.

If you need help with creating a CNAME Record, please contact your domain name registrar (e.g. Register.com or Network Solutions) for support. Keep in mind that changes to DNS records can take up to 48 hours to take effect. 

GoDaddy users, check out these instructions for forwarding the root domain.

The following settings should work for most cases.

IP Address (A Records)

Host Aliases (CNAME Records)

If your root domain must have an A Record, you will have to add a simple redirect from yourdomain.org to www.yourdomain.org. This redirect must be set up on your end and cannot be handled by School Loop.

1. Where a district has both a state domain name (e.g. xyz.k12.ca.us) and a privately purchased vanity domain name (e.g. www.district.net), create CNAME records for both domains.

2. Create sub domains for each school in the district using all of your domains. For each subdomain, create a CNAME record.

3. Where individual schools have purchased their own domain names, create CNAME records for those in addition to the subdomains owned by the district.

4. Do not use a frame redirect (URL masking) to point your domain to School Loop. This method can cause unforeseen navigation problems on your site. For example, redirect pages using "meta-refresh" will not work when using a frame redirect.