Custom domain name options
Learn how to manage and implement domain names for your AEM as a Cloud Service hosted website.
Before you begin
Before you start implementing custom domain names, make sure you understand the following concepts:
What is a domain name
A domain name is the human-friendly name web site name, like adobe.com, that points to a specific location (IP address like 170.2.14.16) on the Internet.
Default domain names in AEM as a Cloud Service
By default, AEM as a Cloud Service is provisioned with a default domain name, ending in *.adobeaemcloud.com. The wild card SSL certificate issued against *.adobeaemcloud.com is automatically applied to all the environments and this wild card certificate is Adobe’s responsibility.
Default domain names are in the https://<SERVICE-TYPE>-p<PROGRAM-ID>-e<ENVIRONMENT-ID>.adobeaemcloud.com format.
- The
<SERVICE-TYPE>could be author, publish or preview. - The
<PROGRAM-ID>is the unique identifier for the program. An organization can have multiple programs. - The
<ENVIRONMENT-ID>is the unique identifier for the environment and each program contains four environments: Rapid Development (RDE), dev, stage, and prod. Each environment contains the above mentioned three service types, except RDE that doesn’t have a preview environment.
In summary, once all the AEM as a Cloud Service environments are provisioned, you have 11 (RDE doesn’t have a preview environment) unique URLs combined with the default domain name.
Adobe-managed CDN vs customer-managed CDN
To reduce the latency and improve the performance of the website, AEM as a Cloud Service is integrated with an Adobe-managed Content Delivery Network (CDN). Adobe-managed CDN is automatically enabled for all the environments. See AEM as a Cloud Service caching for more details.
However, customers can also use their own CDN, referred to as customer-managed CDN. It is not necessary but few customers use it for corporate policies or other reasons. In this case, the customer is responsible for managing the CDN configurations and settings.
Custom domain names
Custom domain names are always preferred over default domain name for branding, authenticity and business development purposes. However, they can only be applied to the publish and preview service types, and not author.
When adding custom domain names, you must provide a valid SSL certificate for the given custom domain. The SSL certificate must be a valid certificate signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA).
Typically, customers use a custom domain name for Prod environments (AEM as a Cloud Service web site) and sometimes for lower environments like stage or dev.
Implementing domain names
To implement domain names using Adobe-managed CDN or customer-managed CDN the following flowchart guides you through the process:
Also, the following table guides you where to manage the specific configurations:
Step-by-step tutorials
Now that you understand the domain name management process, you can implement custom domain names for your AEM as a Cloud Service web site by following the tutorials below:
Custom Domain Names with Adobe-managed CDN: In this tutorial, you learn how to add a custom domain name to an AEM as a Cloud Service website with Adobe-managed CDN.
Custom Domain Names with Customer-managed CDN: In this tutorial, you learn how to add a custom domain name to an AEM as a Cloud Service website with customer-managed CDN.