What is a CNAME and how can I use it?
You may have noticed an option to add a CNAME record within your Sharing Page and Video Hub set up pages. The video below provides information about CNAMEs and how they can benefit your video strategy.
What is a CNAME?
A CNAME is a type of DNS record that maps an alias name to a true or canonical domain name.
This means that you can mask the domain for a set of webpages and make them appear as though they are located elsewhere.
Why use a CNAME?
CNAMEs are important when using Vidyard for two major reasons: domain & brand consistency and marketing automation.
Domain and brand consistency
When you first set up a Vidyard account, you will notice that your sharing page and video hubs are hosted on the vidyard.com domain. When you provide someone with a link to either of these options, the web address may not appear as relevant to you or your business.
Adding a CNAME record allows you to use your own domain on these pages. Visitors may then seamlessly transition between your website and both sets of pages without recognizing that the content exists on two separate domains.
Marketing automation
Hosting a video hub or sharing page on your own domain is a major benefit if you are tracking video view data with a marketing automation platform (MAP).
MAPs identify users on a domain-by-domain basis.
- If someone visits your site and fills out a form on your page, that identification will be associated with a MAP cookie, but only for activity on your domain.
- If the same person visits your sharing page hosted on vidyard.com, your MAP will not recognize the activity performed on your domain with the video view that occurred on your Vidyard hub or sharing page.
- By masking a Vidyard hub or sharing page with a CNAME, your MAP can then recognize the activity from your domain AND the video view from your sharing page as having occurred on the same domain, and therefore belonging to the same visitor.
Adding your CNAME in Vidyard
To use a CNAME, open the settings for either your sharing page or your video hub in Vidyard. From there, you can edit the type of domain that the page uses (a Vidyard-hosted domain versus your own custom CNAME) by changing the Route Type.
- In Vidyard, go to the URL Settings for your sharing page or your video hub
- Open the menu for Route Type, then select the CNAME option
- Enter your CNAME into the box, then select Save when complete
- Contact your web hosting company to set up your DNS (Domain Name Server) settings
- You should have an option that defines Host and Points To.
- Host = the CNAME you've chosen (eg. videos.yourdomain.com)
-
Points To = hubs.vidyard.com
Note: If you choose to secure your new CNAME with HTTPS, our Support team will instead provide you with a different, unique URL to add to the Points To field in your DNS (in place of hubs.vidyard.com). By itself, hubs.vidyard.com only provides an HTTP connection for your CNAME.
Ensuring your CNAME is secure
By default, the two Vidyard-hosted domain options for sharing pages and hubs (share.vidyard.com and *.hubs.vidyard.com) use HTTPS. This ensures that the connection between Vidyard's server and your viewers' web browsers use TLS to encrypt the transfer of data. HTTPS is also a visual cue that indicates to visitors that your web page is secure and trusted.
If you choose to use a custom CNAME (e.g. *videos.yourdomain.com) for your domain, there are additional steps needed in order to enable HTTPS that require you to reach out to our Support Team.
Please take a look at How to secure your sharing page or video hub with HTTPS to get started!
Helpful resources related to HTTPS
If you’d like more information on HTTPS security and related terms, check out these helpful resources:
Redirect behavior when changing route types
In most cases, if you change the route type for your sharing page or video hub (for example, from share.vidyard.com to a custom domain name), Vidyard automatically redirects traffic from the previous URL to the new URL.
In cases where you change your domain from a custom CNAME to any other route type (including a different CNAME), pages may continue to redirect so long as:
- your previous CNAME is still valid
- you maintain a record for your previous CNAME in your DNS and it continues to point to
hubs.vidyard.com
See the table below for details.
| Current route type | New route type | Result |
Default subdomain (share.vidyard.com) |
Vidyard subdomain (*.hubs.vidyard.com) |
Redirects |
Default subdomain (share.vidyard.com) |
CNAME (your own custom domain) | Redirects |
Vidyard subdomain (*hubs.vidyard.com) |
A different Vidyard subdomain ( |
Redirects |
|
Vidyard subdomain ( |
Default subdomain (share.vidyard.com) OR CNAME |
Redirects |
| CNAME (your own custom domain) | Default subdomain (share.vidyard.com) OR Vidyard subdomain (*.hubs.vidyard.com) |
Redirects if you maintain a record of the previous CNAME in your DNS and it points to hubs.vidyard.com
|
| CNAME (your own custom domain) | A different custom CNAME | No redirects. Links to previous URLs will 404. |
Additional considerations
- You can use the same CNAME across various hubs and sharing pages as long as you add a
/path to the end of the URL (e.g. videos.acme.com/videohub, and videos.acme.com/videohub2). That being said, we advise you to leave external facing video hubs on the root of a subdomain for sitemap SEO purposes.
- If you use a CNAME and have social sharing enabled, be aware that your domain may not be whitelisted by Twitter to allow inline playback.
- If this is the case, the sharing page URL will show in the tweet, rather than rendering the video inline
- To resolve this, head to the Twitter Card Validator and request whitelisting for your domain. This can be achieved by entering a sharing page URL that uses the CNAME.