Introducing the Ochre AI support workspace. Start a 14-day trial

Setting up a custom domain for your help center

Serve your help center at help.yourcompany.com with managed SSL. The DNS records, the SSL flow, and what to expect.

By ChristopherUpdated 4 min read

Setting up a custom domain for your help center

A help center at <workspace-slug>.ochrehq.com is fine. A help center at help.acme.com is better. Customers trust your domain, search engines reward it, and the URLs look like part of your product.

What you'll need

  • A domain you control.
  • The ability to add a CNAME (or A) record to your DNS.
  • About 15 minutes for DNS propagation, sometimes longer.

You do not need to bring your own SSL certificate. Ochre provisions and renews certificates for you.

Default URLs (no custom domain)

Out of the box, your help center is reachable at two equivalent URLs:

  • Apex: https://ochrehq.com/help/<workspace-slug>/<article-slug>
  • Subdomain: https://<workspace-slug>.ochrehq.com/help/<article-slug>

Both will keep working after you set up a custom domain.

Choose a subdomain

The conventional choices for a custom domain:

  • help.yourcompany.com
  • support.yourcompany.com
  • docs.yourcompany.com

Pick one. help is the most common because customers type it on instinct.

You can also use the apex domain (yourcompany.com with no subdomain), but most teams already use the apex for marketing. Apex setup requires an A record, not a CNAME, and is slightly more fragile in DNS terms. We recommend a subdomain.

Add the domain in Ochre

Knowledge → Settings → Custom domain. Enter the full hostname (help.yourcompany.com). Ochre shows you the DNS record to add.

Add the DNS record

In your DNS provider's control panel, create a CNAME record:

  • Name / host: help (or whatever subdomain you chose).
  • Value / target: the hostname Ochre shows you.
  • TTL: 300 seconds (5 minutes) is fine. The default is also fine.

Save. Most DNS providers propagate within a minute or two. Some take up to an hour.

SSL provisioning

Once Ochre detects the CNAME, certificate issuance starts automatically. The flow:

  1. Ochre verifies the CNAME points at us.
  2. Ochre requests a Let's Encrypt certificate.
  3. The certificate is installed and SSL goes live.

Total time: usually under 5 minutes after DNS propagates. The settings page shows the live status. If it is stuck for more than 15 minutes, double-check the CNAME value.

Verifying

Visit https://help.yourcompany.com. You should see your help center with a valid certificate. Click the lock in your browser to verify the certificate is for your domain.

If you get a "certificate name mismatch" error, the CNAME is pointing somewhere wrong. Re-check the value in Ochre's settings page and update the DNS record.

Renewals

Ochre auto-renews certificates roughly 30 days before expiry. There is nothing to do. We email you if a renewal fails (usually because someone removed the CNAME).

Removing or changing the domain

To switch to a different subdomain or back to the default Ochre URL, remove the domain from settings. The CNAME can be deleted from your DNS at the same time. Note that:

  • Existing inbound links to the old domain will 404.
  • Search engine results take weeks to update.
  • The default <workspace-slug>.ochrehq.com and apex ochrehq.com/help/<workspace-slug> URLs keep working as long as you have an account.

If you are permanently moving, set up a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one in your DNS provider or edge layer. Ochre does not redirect for you.

www and apex

If you want both help.yourcompany.com and www.help.yourcompany.com to work, add the second hostname in settings as well. Each hostname needs its own CNAME and gets its own certificate.

We recommend picking one canonical hostname and 301-redirecting the others to it from your DNS provider.

Caveats

A few edge cases:

  • CDN proxies (Cloudflare, etc.). If you proxy the CNAME through Cloudflare's orange cloud, certificate issuance may fail because Let's Encrypt cannot see the origin. Set the record to "DNS only" (gray cloud) for issuance, then re-enable proxy if you want.
  • CAA records. If your domain has CAA records that restrict certificate authorities, make sure Let's Encrypt is allowed. Add 0 issue "letsencrypt.org" if needed.
  • Existing wildcard. A wildcard certificate on your domain is fine; it will not conflict with Ochre's per-host certificate.

Email and the help center

The help center custom domain is separate from your inbound email domain. Setting up help.acme.com does not affect support@acme.com. For email setup see Custom domain email.

Sitemap and SEO

Once the custom domain is live, your sitemap publishes at https://help.yourcompany.com/sitemap.xml. Submit that URL (not the old default) to Google Search Console. See Help center sitemap.

If your articles were already indexed under the old URL, set the canonical URL on each article to the new domain to consolidate ranking signal. See Article SEO.

Troubleshooting

  • DNS not detected after 30 minutes. Check the CNAME value matches exactly. No trailing dot mismatches, no typos.
  • Certificate stuck in pending. Look for CAA records or proxy issues.
  • Site loads but old theme. Hard refresh; CDN cache can lag a minute.

If none of that resolves it, contact support with the domain and we will dig in.

Related

Was this article helpful?

← Back to Ochre Help
Custom domain for help center | Ochre setup guide · Ochre