Gotchas for multiple Custom URLs mapped to Communities?

Question

I wish to map multiple Custom URLs to multiple Customer Communities (single Salesforce org). I'd like to make sure there are no gotchas in the current release. For instance, this page says the following:

If you want to set a preferred custom URL for authenticated pages and emails that links back to the site or community, then select Site Primary Custom URL. This is only available on the root path for Force.com and Communities sites and not available at all on Site.com sites.

I'm not clear on what that last sentence means. Does this imply some limitation if I have multiple Communities sites, each with its domain, or is that fully supported?

I would like a configuration where:

• https://community1.mycompany.com/ maps to Customer Community 1 (no sub-folder)
• https://community2.mycompany.com/ maps to Customer Community 2 (no sub-folder)
• the above URLs appear in all customer-facing communication, including new user emails, password resets, forgot password, etc.
• etc

Are there any current limitations to be aware of or will this just work?

Answer 1

All you'll need to do is make a CNAME record for community2 that points to the same place your community1 does. Upload the same https cert to the company2 Domain in Salesforce as you did community1 (given its a wildcard cert for your primary domain). Attach the URL to community2 and set it as the Primary Site URL.

Only gotcha would be if you accidentally make the custom URL http and don't upload your cert. This will lead to a slightly misleading configuration in the UI where your custom URL is set as the primary but the browser redirects all that to the https Force domain attached to the community. This will also happen if there is a break or error in your cert chain back to a trusted CA.

Probably a bit overkill on the answer, but hopefully it's in line to what you already had in mind.

Answer 2

You should be able to do what you want to do. Each community gets its own Force.com site so each can have its own primary url. In your case, you will have a root path url for each community, but with communities that does not matter anyways because the first custom https url will become the primary url without it being explicitly set.