Setting Up Your Own White-Labeled Client Domain and Email
The Client Login feature allows you give your clients a completely white-labeled login where they can see screenshots and reports of work done. If you set up your own white-labeled domain, your clients will not see the words “Time Doctor” anywhere when they log in. This allows you to give your clients the ability to log in to your website.
NOTE: If you do not care if the client login is white-labeled or not, then you do not need to go through this process. You can give your clients your Time Doctor client login URL instead, and they can log in there.
Here are the steps to set up your own white-labeled domain:
- Set up your Time Doctor subdomain.
- Create your own subdomain on YOUR domain where you would like your clients to be able to log in.
- Create a CNAME record in your DNS pointing to your Time Doctor client login subdomain.
- Select and fill in “Create your own white-labeled domain.”
Step 1: Set up your Time Doctor subdomain.
This step is easy. You just need to make sure that you have entered a unique Time Doctor subdomain on the Clients page. From your Time Doctor web dashboard, go to the Settings > Clients page. Then enter your unique domain in this field.
Step 2: Create your own subdomain on YOUR domain.
You should have your own URL that clients can use to log in. This can be whatever you would like it to be. For example, if your site is VirtualAssistantPros.com, you can create a subdomain like clients.VirtualAssistantPros.com. You will need to contact your DNS hosting to create this subdomain. Most hosts or domain registers have a control panel that allows you to easily make changes to the domains you own.
Step 3: Create a CNAME record in your DNS pointing to your Time Doctor login URL.
Standard BIND Zone File
clients.virtualassistantpros.com. IN CNAME virtualassistantpros.c.timedoctor.com.
NOTE: The trailing dot is necessary in BIND configuration files.
Generic Hosting
- Log in to the control panel of your domain.
- Find the section that says DNS or Name Servers.
- Create a new DNS record and an “Alias Name” to point your own subdomain to your Time Doctor client login URL. In the example above, you would be directing clients.virtualassistantpros.com to virtualassistantpros.c.timedoctor.com. In this case, the “Alias Name” is the subdomain value on your domain, which is clients.
- Edit these elements accordingly (making sure to replace virtualassistantpros with your actual site name):
- Type: CNAME
- Name: clients.virtualassistantpros.com
- Value: virtualassistantpros.c.timedoctor.com
- Save changes to your DNS records.
Unfortunately, these instructions will vary a bit for each domain registrar. If you have trouble completing this step and do not have a server administrator to help you, you can ask our support team for help or ask your domain name registrar for support.
In the example above, you are trying to “Set up a CNAME redirect from clients.virtualassistantpros.com to virtualassistantpros.c.timedoctor.com.” If you say this to any server administrator, they will be able to complete the task for you.
Step 4: Select and fill in “Create your own White-Labeled Domain.”
Fill in the details of your white-labeled domain on the Clients Settings page:
Step 5: Tell your clients how to log in.
First, check your new URL yourself. Navigating to it to make sure that you see the client login portal. It may take around an hour for the change to propagate across all servers and to generate an SSL certificate for your white-labeled domain, so please allow some time for that.
Your clients will need three pieces of information in order to log in:
1. The proper login URL (See above.)
NOTE: This is NOT the URL you use to edit your client settings. It is NOT https://login.timedoctor.com/#/clients.
2. The email address they should use to log in.
3. The password they should use.
That is it!
For System Administrators: SSL Certificate Notes
All white labeled client domains are secured with SSL. Time Doctor obtains its SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt certificate authority. If you use CAA (Certificate Authority Authorization) DNS records, make sure to allow Let's Encrypt.
You can refer to https://sslmate.com/labs/caa/ (CAA Record Generator) for more details.
Setting up white-labeled email address
It's fairly simple to set up your own white label email address that will be used in sending invites to your clients to join your portal and in sending reports.
1. Start with clicking Use white-labeled email address button.
2. Fill in required information in the form. Your smtp server settings will be different from the image below. If you are not sure about the settings, please check with your hosting provider.
3. Click on Test to make sure everything is working ok. If it does, you will see green confirmation message.
4. Click Save.
Now your clients will be receiving emails from your white-labeled email address.