Custom Domains & Branding

Overview

Your volunteers sign up on a site that carries your name, your colours and, if you want it, your own web address. This guide covers domains, site privacy, the visual branding settings, the wording settings, and how a single campaign can look different from the rest of your tenant.

Domain and design settings are Owner-only in the admin portal.

Your domains

Every campaign site is served from a web address (a host). There are three kinds:

• A PurposeTech address for the tenant, such as your-org.purposetech.io. You choose the first part under Settings > Tenant Settings (the "PurposeTech hosted domain" field, which tells you whether the name is available). Campaigns that have no domain of their own use the tenant's address.
• A PurposeTech address for one campaign, set in the Subdomain field under Campaign Settings > Domain & Security. The field is meant for development and testing before you go live.
• Your own domain, such as volunteers.yourcharity.org.nz, for the tenant or for a single campaign.

The Settings > Domains page lists the tenant's address and each campaign address or custom domain. For each one you can:

• Reassign it to a different campaign in the tenant, or unassign it.
• Make the website private, so visitors need a password to get in. Turn on Website is private and set a Website password (at least six characters). Private sites are useful for testing and for invite-only programmes.

Setting up a custom domain

You need access to the DNS settings for your domain, usually at your registrar or website host.

Step 1: Add the domain in PurposeTech

1. For a single campaign, go to Settings > Campaign Settings and find the Custom Domain card. For the whole tenant, go to Settings > Tenant Settings and find Custom Domain Settings.
2. Enter the domain. A subdomain such as volunteers.yourcharity.org.nz is fine.
3. Choose Add domain.

If the domain is already in use by another campaign or project, PurposeTech tells you instead of adding it.

Step 2: Add the DNS record

After the domain is accepted, the portal shows the record to add with your domain provider:

Use the values the portal shows you, as they are the ones that apply to your setup. If your DNS provider cannot create this record, contact support.

Step 3: Wait for DNS to update

DNS changes usually take effect within minutes, and can take longer with some providers. Once the record is visible, your site loads on the new address. If the site still shows a security warning several hours after the record has propagated, contact support.

After the domain works, use the Domains page to check its privacy setting and which campaign it points at.

DNS troubleshooting

Domain not connecting

1. Check the record. Use a DNS lookup tool (such as dig or MXToolbox) to confirm the record exists and the value is exactly 76.76.21.21.
2. Check the name. A record on the wrong host is the most common mistake. For volunteers.yourcharity.org.nz the host is volunteers, though some providers want the full name.
3. Check for conflicts. A CNAME and an A record cannot sit on the same name. Remove the old record first.
4. Wait. Some providers take up to a day, especially if nameservers were changed recently.
5. Still stuck? Contact support with the domain and the record you added.

Moving from an old address

PurposeTech only serves the domains you have added. To send visitors from an old address to the new one, set up a redirect where the old address is hosted.

Branding

All design settings are under Design in the admin portal, in two groups:

• Tenant Defaults – the look every campaign in the tenant starts from: Default Styles, Default Brand Colours, Default Header & Footer, Default CSS and Default Form Fields.
• Campaign Branding – the same pages for one campaign: Campaign Styles, Brand Colours, Header & Footer, Custom CSS and Registration Form, plus Onboarding Flows.

Visual identity

On the Styles page, three text fields set the wording of the home page: Event header copy, Event sub header copy and Intro paragraph copy.

To save typing, Header & Footer can build a header or footer from your existing website (enter the address and choose Generate Header or Generate Footer), and Brand Colours can read a palette from a website. See AI Assistant. Review and adjust anything it generates.

There is no separate logo upload on the Design pages. Your logo goes into the header HTML, and into emails through the email layout (see Email & Messaging). The sample header that new tenants start with is a placeholder, so replace it before you go live.

Wording: terminology

If your organisation calls things something else, rename them. Tenant Settings and Campaign Settings each have a Terminology card where you set the singular and plural for Region, Area, Site and Shift. For example, call areas "suburbs". It changes the words shown in the admin portal and on the public site, and nothing about the data. A blank field inherits from the level above (campaign from tenant, tenant from the default), and Reset to inherited clears your changes.

Contact number

Each campaign has a Contact Number, set under Contact & Location on Campaign Settings. A new campaign starts with the tenant's number if the tenant has one. The number is shown to volunteers in certain situations and appears on exported roster PDFs.

Linking to your own terms & conditions

By default the Terms link in the site menu goes to the built-in terms page. If your terms are published on your own website, PurposeTech support can point the menu link at that address instead. It is not a setting in the admin portal, so contact support with the address.

Campaign-level overrides

By default a campaign uses the tenant's styling. To give a campaign its own look:

1. Make sure the campaign has its own subdomain or custom domain.
2. In Campaign Settings > Campaign Styling, switch on Override tenant style settings.
3. Edit the campaign's own Styles, Brand Colours, Header & Footer and Custom CSS under Design > Campaign Branding.

Until both are in place, the campaign pages show a warning and the tenant defaults still apply.

What is set where

Branding checklist

Before going live, check that:

• Header and footer are your own, not the sample (generate them from your website or write them by hand)
• Colours match your brand on both desktop and mobile
• Email layout and templates carry your branding (send yourself a test)
• Terminology reads the way your volunteers talk
• Contact number is a line that is answered on the day
• Custom domain record is added and the site loads on it
• Privacy – the website is public when you want it to be (Settings > Domains)
• Campaign site – open it in a private browser window to see what volunteers see

Next steps

• Organisation Setup – full tenant configuration
• Email & Messaging – email templates, layouts and scheduling
• User Management – manage admin access