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add help centre domain cnames (temporary values for authentication)#1710

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johnduffell merged 4 commits into
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jd/help-centre-domain
Jul 21, 2026
Merged

add help centre domain cnames (temporary values for authentication)#1710
johnduffell merged 4 commits into
mainfrom
jd/help-centre-domain

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@johnduffell

@johnduffell johnduffell commented Jul 20, 2026

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We would like to serve the salesforce experience version of the help centre via fastly.

The CODE version is here: https://help.code.dev-theguardian.com/

This requires quite a bit of setup, first we have to prove to salesforce that we own the domain by pointing help.theguardian.com to a special value, then we have to change it to correctly point it to fastly.

Relevant docs:
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.domain_mgmt_enable_https.htm&type=5
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.custom_url_add.htm&type=5

CODE only:

  • Since the CODE CNAME record was created manually in NS1, we first need to "adopt" the record to CFN by creating it with the same details (done)

CODE and PROD

  • We need to CNAME the host name to a special (invalid) hostname, presumably to prove to salesforce that any incoming traffic with the host header of our customer facing domain is actually supposed to be picked up by our salesforce backend (and we are not stealing traffic from some unrelaited salesforce customer who is on the same tenant)
  • Then we need to update it with the correct fastly name ( point help centre at fastly #1713 )

This PR adds the Guardian DNS record entry needed to authenticate, (then we can do another PR to change it to the correct fastly hostname.)

Testing:

Deployed to CODE and the record is available:

% dig +noall +answer CNAME help.code.dev-theguardian.com
help.code.dev-theguardian.com. 300 IN    CNAME    help.code.dev-theguardian.com.00d20000000nq5geaa.live.siteforce.com.
%

and the domain could be added in salesforce successfully.

Then the next PR #1713 was also deployed to CODE, at which point the site started working

@johnduffell johnduffell added the feature Departmental tracking: work on a new feature label Jul 20, 2026
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johnduffell marked this pull request as ready for review July 21, 2026 08:03
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@rafaelbarreto-theguardian rafaelbarreto-theguardian left a comment

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LGTM

@johnduffell
johnduffell merged commit b4bdb25 into main Jul 21, 2026
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@johnduffell
johnduffell deleted the jd/help-centre-domain branch July 21, 2026 13:06
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gu-prout Bot commented Jul 21, 2026

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Seen on PROD (merged by @johnduffell 8 minutes and 37 seconds ago) Please check your changes!

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