Customizing your workspace's URL

A new Opendatasoft workspace will have a URL in the form: <workspacename>.opendatasoft.com.

As the workspace's URL is a very important tool for discoverability, branding, and ease of access, there will often be a need to customize this URL. As such, the Opendatasoft platform allows for adding additional names to a workspace. These customization options are currently not exposed in the back office. They must be requested by using the support form in the back office.

In the following, the workspace "name" will represent the first base name of an Opendatasoft workspace, and we will call any additional names "aliases." All of these names are the host part of the URLs used to access the workspace.

It is also possible to change the base URL of an Opendatasoft workspace to a custom name whose authoritative DNS server you control. For instance, a company called "Example" has an Opendatasoft workspace named example. Its main URL is example.opendatasoft.com, but the company might want to set up their workspace in order to use the alias data.example.com.

This can be done in two steps:

1. Create a DNS record of the CNAME type for the desired alias with the default name of your Opendatasoft workspace as a value.

A trailing dot after a DNS name means an absolute name, instead of a relative one. In DNS configuration, names are usually relative by default, so data.example.com would actually mean data.example.com.example.com., which is generally not wanted.The DNS record for the above example would look like this: data.example.com. IN CNAME example.opendatasoft.com.If one's DNS provider uses relative names, it can look like this: data IN CNAME example.opendatasoft.com.

Your DNS provider will usually have documentation explaining how to set up custom entries using their interface.

1. The new alias must be registered as an alias of the main workspace on the Opendatasoft platform. To do so, please contact the Opendatasoft support by using the support form in the back office.

Any number of distinct DNS names can be added to an Opendatasoft workspace. Though all names and aliases can be used to access the workspace simultaneously, the first alias will be used by default for URLs generated to access the site from the outside (in a notification email, for example).

User login sessions are also specific to a given workspace name, so it is possible for a user to be authenticated when accessing a workspace via one alias and unauthenticated (anonymous) on another alias, or the main name.

Some DNS providers offer web redirections as a means to change a site's URL. However, a web redirection is not the same as a DNS CNAME and cannot be used to customize the URL of an Opendatasoft workspace.

A or AAAA types records are not supported by the Opendatasoft platform as the IP address of your workspace is susceptible to change.

HTTPS is a widely used protocol that aims at ensuring the privacy and integrity of the exchanges between a website and its users by providing HTTP over a secure communication layer. For these safety and integrity reasons, the Opendatasoft platform enforces the use of HTTPS throughout its services. As such, requests made to Opendatasoft workspaces and all their aliases are HTTPS-enabled. TLS is the actual protocol used to secure HTTPS today, which replaced the original, deprecated SSL protocol.

However, if one chose to use a custom workspace name (for instance, from our example above, data.example.com), the TLS certificate will be generated by Opendatasoft on one's behalf using Let's Encrypt's services. Certificate generation and renewal are handled by Opendatasoft transparently. The renewal process is completely automated, as long as the DNS entry is set up and stays valid. Let's Encrypt certificates provide the same security level as any other Domain-Validated TLS certificates, and their short lifecycle (3 months) ensures a constantly updated security level. Let's Encrypt certificates are free of charge for Opendatasoft customers.

If the configuration of one's own DNS includes a CAA entry (Certificate Authority Authorization), it will be necessary to add Let's Encrypt to the list of authorized CAs. The required identifier is letsencrypt.org.

Suppose you have multiple languages on the Opendatasoft workspace and you use language-specific aliases. In that case, you can request each alias to be linked to a specific language. For instance, if there are two aliases, data.example.co.uk and daten.example.de, it can be requested that users accessing the workspace through the first alias be served English content; and those accessing it through the second alias be served German content by default. Users can then switch languages as usual.