If you are among the Chitika eMinimalls (aff link) publishers who have been accepted into the ShopLinc beta programme, I’m pretty sure the first thing you would want to do is to setup your blog or site’s ShopLinc on your own domain, e.g. shop.yourdomain.com.

Chitika does have a FAQ entry for this (which has been improved significantly since I last saw it), which should be enough for publishers with more experience with domain management. But you might still want a step-by-step guide, so here’s my stab at one:

• Basically, the difficult part of the whole process is adding a custom CNAME record on your host’s side of things. Every host has different policies in place regarding custom DNS records like CNAMEs. Some allow you to change things in your control panel, while others require you to contact support to do it for you (which actually saves you the hassle, even if things take longer to get done).

• If you need to go through your host’s support team, then forward them the contents of Chitika’s FAQ entry. If you can do it through your control panel, here’s some instructions. Warning: This is not for the weak-hearted. Screwing up can be really bad. Really.

  For WebHost Manager/cPanel users:

  1. Enter your WebHost Manager panel (directly or through the icon in your cPanel).
  2. Click DNS Functions.
  3. Click on Edit a DNS Zone.
  4. Choose the zone you want to edit, which should normally be yourdomain.com
  5. You’ll be taken to a page with a lot of fields. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see a section titled Add New Entries Below this Line.
  6. Fill one of the empty rows there with the appropriate details, i.e. fill the Domain field with shop if you want your ShopLinc to be at shop.yourdomain.com, select CNAME from the drop-down menu, and lastly, fill one of the remaining empty fields in the row with “shoplink.chitika.net.” (the extra period at the end is important) but without the quotes.
  7. Press Save.

  
  For Dreamhost (aff link) users:

  1. Enter your Dreamhost Control Panel.
  2. Click Manage Domains under the Domains tab.
  3. Click the tiny DNS link next to the domain you want to put your ShopLinc on, i.e. yourdomain.com.
  4. On the page you’re taken to, you’ll see a section titled Add a DNS record to yourdomain.com.
  5. Fill in the empty fields there with the appropriate details, i.e. fill the Name field with shop (if you want your ShopLinc at shop.yourdomain.com), select CNAME under the Type drop-down menu, and lastly, fill in the value field with shoplinc.chitika.net (no need to add an extra period unlike for WHM users since the Dreamhost panel adds it for you).
  6. Press Add Record Now.
• Now, we have to change the settings in your Chitika ShopLinc control panel. Here’s what you have to do:
  1. In your Chitika publisher panel, click Customize your ShopLinc under the ShopLinc tab.
  2. Click the Advanced link.
  3. Scroll down to the ShopLinc Domain field, and fill it with shop.yourdomain.com (or whatever you added in your DNS records earlier).
  4. Press Save Changes.

And that’s it. You’ll have to wait quite a bit before it starts working though (as your new DNS information propagates). Anything I missed?

P.S.: If you haven’t applied, give Chitika ShopLinc’s publisher requirements and ProBlogger’s review a look before applying via your publisher panel.

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