Site Launch

Ready to launch your site?

Let us know in advance (ideally 2 weeks) prior to when you’d like to launch the site.

If you need the site to be up urgently, let us know when we’re onboarding you onto isomer or as soon as possible.

Before you proceed, there are a few important things you should note.

Get ready an SSL certificate

Sites are typically launched along with SSL certificate. Read more about what it is here.

On Isomer, are two different kinds of SSL cert you can choose from.

  1. LetsEncrypt SSL cert, it is free and renews automatically which allows agencies to have an easier time setting up for site launch.

  2. Custom SSL cert. You have to purchase on your own separately. Do note that this method requires yearly renewal of SSL cert and you will have to pay for this.

Install your SSL cert on isomer's CDN

The different types of certs will require different steps of installation. This step can only be done by the isomer team.

Site launch with LetsEncrypt SSL cert

Isomer is now able to support the provisioning of SSL certs for free that renew automatically and managed by the team. These are issued by Let's Encrypt, a non-profit certificate authority, through two avenues:

  1. KeyCDN, for domains such as "www.example.gov.sg" and;

  2. Certbot, a free and open-source helper application that automatically obtains and installs certificates into NGINX for "example.gov.sg"

We highly recommend newly onboarded agency sites to make use of the service. If you wish to have your site launch with LetsEncrypt SSL cert, please reach out to us and we'll share a form with you for site launch.

Once you have filled up the form, your site will go live within the next 30 min - 1 hour. Only submit the form when your site is ready to go live.

If not, you may refer to the next section with instructions on how to launch your site with a custom SSL cert.

Please remove any IPv6 records as it will interfere with the provisioning of certs.

Site launch with custom SSL cert

Before you purchase your own custom SSL cert, please make sure that you have obtained CSR (Certificate Signing Request) from the Isomer team.

Step 1. We’ll generate a CSR for your to purchase your own SSL cert and provide your CNAME and A-record for you to update your DNS records on the domain you’ve purchased.

Step 2. Send us your SSL cert and we’ll install it on our CDN.

Set up your DNS (Domain Name System) records

Your site should have a domain (a.k.a URL). To configure your isomer site to point to your domain, you need to log into ITSM to make the DNS record changes. Read more on how to make these changes on ITSM.

Make sure that you have these two records set up on your DNS.

Domain type

Type

Details

www (e.g www.agency.gov.sg)

CNAME

Points to a URL that isomer team provides upon request

root (e.g agency.gov.sg)

A-record

Points to a redirection server IP address, which we will provide upon request

Our redirection server redirects all of the non-HTTP traffic to HTTPS traffic, and all the non-www traffic to www. To see this in effect, try typing http://your-site.gov.sg into the address bar and you will notice that it gets redirected immediately.

Once your DNS is configured and SSL cert installed, your site will be live anytime. You should schedule a time with the isomer team to do this.

Are you an Isomer site switching from Custom to Let's Encrypt Cert?

There will be 1 - 1.5hr downtime during the switch.

As this service is provided at no cost to all agencies, we appreciate your understanding that this switch can only be performed during work hours so that the team could be on standby in cases of incidents.

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