Verify Your Domain

[0:04] Hi, and welcome to Accessible Web RAMP. In this video, I’m going to discuss domain verification with you. This is the first video in my four part video series on domain verification. And in this video, I’m going to discuss domain verification by email specifically, please refer to my other domain verification videos for alternative methods of verifying your domain.

[0:27] So when you first go to create your RAMP account, the email you use to sign up is pretty important. If you use an email like this that matches the domain of the site you are trying to add to RAMP, then you won’t have to worry about verifying your domain after sign up because your email address will be used automatically verify your domain.

[0:46] But say you sign up for your account with a Gmail or a website or an email address that does not match up with the domain of the site you’re adding to ramp. Well, when you first try to sign up, you’ll get this message actually recommending you do use an email associated with your domain. But if that’s not possible, obviously we can push ahead and get started anyway, it just means that you’ll have to verify your domain after activating your account.

[1:19] Log in to Accessible Web RAMP. From your website’s list, select the site that you need to verify the domain for. Because I used the Gmail account email account to sign up for RAMP, I need to verify my domain and I met with a pop up that says “Please Verify your Domain to Continue.” Click Verify Domain, which will open up the domain verifications option menu.

[1:43] There are three options for independent domain verification. This video focuses on verification by email, I will cover verification by script and by DNS in separate videos. There are two ways you can verify an account after it’s already been created using an email address that is associated with the domain.

[2:02] The first is by inviting a new team member as the owner of the account who has an email that matches up with a domain. So I’m going to go to RAMP settings, the Teams Tab, and then I’m going to click Add User. In the Add User menu, enter the email of the user who has an email associated with the domain of the site you’re trying to scan and select owner. We need to make them an owner for this new invite to trigger verification. Then I’m going to click Invite Owner. Now this person whose email I just put in which happens to be me, will receive an ownership change request email. Once they confirm the ownership change, and they log in to RAMP, then the domain of the site will automatically be verified within RAMP. It’s one of the easiest ways to verify domain.

[2:52] The other way you can trigger domain verification using email after sign up is by going to your account settings. So in the My Account, which you can find in the upper right hand corner, you’ll go to Account Settings. And you can change the email associated with your account by simply editing it here on the Account Settings page. Again, using an email that is associated with the domain is really key here because that is what will trigger verification upon confirmation of this email change. So I’m not going to do it just because I’ve already invited myself as an alternative teammate already. But if I click Save Changes here, it will send an email change confirmation email to this address, and I would just need to go to my email and confirm that I want to make the change in email on the account. At which point when I log back in the account will automatically verify my domain.

[3:47] If you do not have a email address that is associated with the domain of your site, no worries. There are other options for verifying your domain, which you can learn more about in the other videos in my domain verification series. The fourth option for verification is always to get in contact with our team. We are more than happy to help you verify your site

Hi and welcome to Accessible Web RAMP.

In this video, I’m going to demonstrate domain verification by script.

If you signed up for RAMP using an email that does not match the domain of the website that you’re creating an account for, you’ll be asked to verify your domain before you can continue with account setup.

We’ll click verify domain to open up the independent domain verifications options menu.

You’ll see here that there are three options for independent domain verification.

I encourage you to check out my videos on verification by DNS and domain verification by email for alternative methods of verifying your domain.

In this video, I’m going to discuss domain verification by script, which involves activating and installing the ally center on your website.

I’ll click on ally center, this link here, to take me to the ally center section of the RAMP Settings page, which is where you’ll activate and install the ally center from.

Let me give you a little bit more information on what the ally center is, though first. Our ally center is a way that you can demonstrate your commitment to accessibility and improving the accessibility of your website as well as making sure that every user can access your website equally.

Within your ally center, you’ll find an accessibility policy, as well as a get help form for accessibility issue reporting. Optionally, you can display a public log of accessibility remediations. And if you’re part of our ally partnership program, you’ll have an ally partner tab, which discusses the program and the fact that you’re working with a third party to ensure accessibility.

Alright. So now let’s take a look at how we can activate and install the ally center.

First, you’ll want to make sure this box here is checked to activate the ally center.

Next, you can decide whether or not you want to keep your accessibility log publicly displayed in the ally center. For the sake of this example, I am going to uncheck the public accessibility log box because I don’t want to make my home accessibility log public at this time. I just don’t have any example log entries in the log yet, so it’s irrelevant for the example.

You’ll notice that we pre-populate your accessibility policy field with a default policy. You’re encouraged to customize this for your organization and your organization’s accessibility goals but having an accessibility policy listed, whether it’s the default or customized one is an important element of letting your users know that you are committed to accessibility. And finally, you’ll want to make sure you fill out the accessibility advocate form information. This is the contact that users can reach out to if they encounter any accessibility barriers on your site. This allows you to provide reasonable accommodations to assistive technology users and users with disabilities. It is important to provide more than one means of contact here, like phone and email, so that if a user can’t email, they can call you and vice versa.

Alright, so finally, we’ll click save settings to activate the ally center. Now the center is active, we’re going to head on over to installation API key and click this button in the right hand corner, which opens up the ally center installation information.

So you’ll see that there are a few different methods for installing. If you have a WordPress site, you can use the WordPress plug in if your site is not built on WordPress, then you can copy this code snippet at the top here and paste it as close to your closing body tag as possible on the site.

But for this example, I am going to demonstrate installing the ally center using the WordPress plugin.

For additional information on ally center installation and customization because there are several different appearance customization options you have as well, I encourage you to check out my video on installing and customizing your ally center.

Alright, so we are using the WordPress plugin for this example, for domain verification. And I’m going to copy this unique API key here.

Once I have that copied, I’m going to head on over to my WordPress account. We’re going to go to the plugins tab and add new.

In WordPress plugins we’ll search for Accessible Web and we’ll scroll down to find the Accessible Web Ally Center Plugin. Here it is.

We’ll click install now.

Once it’s installed, it’ll give you the option to activate, so we’ll click Activate.

This should bring us over to the plugins settings page in WordPress. Find the Accessible Web Ally Center Plugin, click on settings and then just copy and paste the API key that we copied or you don’t copy base, but paste the API key that we had copied over from the RAMP instructions right here and click save settings.

Typically, this API key may be pre-populated when you install the plug in. But it’s always good to check and make sure that it matches the API key provided over in RAMP here, just because it doesn’t need to match this in order for it to accurately install your ally center.

Once those settings have been saved, your ally center should be installed on the site. You can head on over to your site to check. All you have to do is usually refresh the page and if you installed it correctly, you should see it pop up. And until you customize the location and appearance of your ally center, it’ll appear as a floating badge in the left hand corner.

Alright, you can see that the ally center has been installed. It looks a little different because the example website I’m using is not part of our ally partner program and because I chose to keep that accessibility log private for now.

Alright, so finally in order to verify your domain we’re heading on over to RAMP and within RAMP settings, we’ll click on the first tab here that just says RAMP. And it gives you the option to verify your domain here and right next to your primary monitoring environment.

Just click on one of these verify buttons, which opens up that domain verification options menu again, and your last step in verifying your domain by script is to click verify script.

From this domain verifications options menu and success. Our domain has been verified and you can proceed with account setup.

Alright, if you run into any issues verifying your domain please don’t hesitate to reach out to us we are more than happy to help you with verification.

Hi and welcome to RAMP.

In this video, I’m going to demonstrate domain verification by DNS.

When you first log into your RAMP account, if your domain hasn’t been verified, you’ll be asked to please verify your domain in order to continue with setup.

I’m going to click verify domain to open up the domain verifications options menu.

This menu lists the three options for independent domain verification along with instructions on how to do each of them.

I do recommend checking out my videos on domain verification by script and verification by email.

Both these methods of domain verification take effect more quickly than domain verification by DNS.

Alright, but I’m going to demonstrate domain verification by DNS today.

So we’ll log into your DNS or web hosting provider and copy this unique verification token.

So once I’ve copied that in RAMP, we’re gonna go over to my hosting provider.

In the case of this example site, the hosting provider is Bluehost.

You’ll want to navigate to the area that allows you to manage your domains, click manage to manage my domain, and then navigate to the DNS settings area.

In Bluehost, they separate out the DNS files by type, so you’ll want to scroll down to find the TXT file or the TXT records.

So we’re going to add a TXT record here in order to verify our domain.

Again, that’s going to your hosting or DNS provider and adding a TXT record.

So I’ll click Add Record.

Typically, it’ll ask for sort of a host record or name and you can use the @ symbol for that and then you paste your unique verification token in the TXT value field or this may be like a content field depending on your hosting provider.

This form here, the TTL is not important. You can set it to be sort of whatever it doesn’t matter very much, and then click Save to take effect.

Now, keep in mind that it will take up to 12 hours for DNS verification to complete, so it does take longer to verify your account by DNS.

Once you’ve clicked that save, you can click verify by DNS. And once you hit this RAMP will continue trying to verify your domain by DNS for at least the next 12 hours.

Just be patient and give it some time to take effect. If you don’t notice that your domain has been verified within 12 to 24 hours. I recommend reaching out to our team for assistance with verification.

Alright, that’s been domain verification by DNS. If you have any issues verifying your domain please don’t hesitate to reach out to us because we’re always happy to help.