White-Label for Organizers¶

This guide covers the two things an organization can customize: its brand colors, which every organization can set, and its custom domain, which the Revel platform enables per organization. It also explains what changes for your attendees. For what is deliberately not customizable (the Revel footer, shared accounts, email sender), see the overview.

Brand colors¶

Brand colors are free for every organization. Open your organization's admin settings and find Brand colors. You can set:

• Primary color: used for buttons, links and highlights.
• Accent color (optional): used for small touches such as the follow heart. An accent only takes effect together with a primary color.

Enter colors as six-digit hex values, #RRGGBB, for example #8C3CDD. Upper or lower case both work. Leave both empty, or use Reset to Revel defaults, to go back to the standard Revel look. You need the "edit organization" permission to change them.

Readability adjustment¶

Revel pages come in a light and a dark mode, and one color rarely reads well on both. A pale yellow is fine on a dark page and almost invisible on a light one. Instead of rejecting such colors, Revel accepts any valid color and adjusts it per mode so text and buttons stay legible.

For each mode, Revel keeps your color's hue and saturation and nudges its lightness (darker in light mode, lighter in dark mode) in 1% steps, stopping at the first step that is readable on that mode's page background and on cards. A color that is already readable is used exactly as you entered it. The text on top of a button (black or white) is then chosen for the best contrast.

The targets are WCAG AA contrast ratios: 4.5:1 for the primary color, because it is also used as link text, and 3:1 for the accent, which is used for graphics and small UI elements.

Accent colors follow the same rule with the lower 3:1 target. For example an accent #F9B233 becomes #C07D06 in light mode and stays #F9B233 in dark mode.

Live preview¶

The settings page shows a live preview of buttons, links and badges in both light and dark mode while you type, and tells you for each mode whether your color is used as entered or adjusted for readability. Nothing is saved until you press Save colors. The preview uses the same calculation the real pages use, so what you see is what visitors get.

Where your colors appear¶

A few details worth knowing:

• Changing your colors refreshes PDFs and Apple passes the next time they are generated. A card a guest already saved to Google Wallet keeps the look it had when it was saved. New saves use the new colors.
• The "Powered by revel." mark on PDFs and passes is not recolored.
• Your logo is used in emails, wallet passes and the tenant header. Upload a square image (400x400 pixels is a good size).

Custom domain¶

A custom domain serves your whole attendee journey from your own address, for example events.example.org: your organization page, events, applications, memberships and checkout. Visitors there see your name, logo and colors, and only your events.

Before you start¶

• Ask the platform to enable it. Custom domains are switched on per organization by a Revel platform admin. Until then, requesting a domain answers "Custom domains are not enabled for this organization".
• Only the organization owner can request, check or remove the domain.
• Choose a subdomain such as events.example.org or tickets.example.org. An address with no subdomain (example.org) usually cannot hold a CNAME record at DNS providers.
• You need access to the DNS settings of the domain.

A hostname must be a full domain name with at least one dot, without https://, a port, a wildcard (*.example.org) or an IP address. It cannot be a Revel hostname or a subdomain of one. The same hostname cannot be used by two organizations at once.

Request flow¶

1. In your organization settings, open Custom domain and enter the hostname.
2. Revel answers immediately with the DNS records to create. The domain is now Pending.
3. Create the records at your DNS provider (see below).
4. Wait for the domain to turn Active, or press Check now.

Only one domain can be pending or active at a time.

DNS records¶

On Revel's hosted platform you create two records: the CNAME and the ownership TXT record. The page may list more TXT records. (On an instance without Cloudflare provisioning only the CNAME is listed.)

Create exactly the records the page shows, with exactly the values it shows. The list can be refreshed while the domain is pending, so if a TXT record appears later, add it. A CNAME alone is not enough: until Revel finds the ownership TXT record in public DNS, the domain stays Pending and the page tells you which record to add. Keep the records in place while the domain is in use. DNS providers differ on whether the name field wants the full hostname or only the part before your domain. If validation does not move, that is the first thing to check.

Revel asks Cloudflare to validate the hostname over HTTP and to issue the certificate automatically, so you do not need to buy or upload a certificate.

Statuses¶

Removed domains disappear from the page. A removed hostname is free again.

Emails you get about your domain¶

You do not have to keep the settings page open. Revel emails you, the organization owner, when the status of your domain changes:

Each email is sent once per change. You get none when you Remove the domain yourself, and none while the domain simply stays pending. Only the owner gets them; staff do not. The link to the settings page always points to Revel, never to your own domain, so you can still open it when the domain is down.

These emails follow your notification preferences: you can turn each type off (they are called Org custom domain active and Org custom domain failed), and if you use a digest they still arrive right away. The settings page shows the same status either way.

Timing and "Check now"¶

DNS changes can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to be visible, depending on your provider. Once they are, Cloudflare validates the hostname and issues the certificate, usually within minutes. Revel checks every pending domain on its own every 15 minutes, so a domain normally turns active within about 15 minutes of Cloudflare being ready and your TXT record being visible, without you doing anything.

Check now asks Cloudflare for the current state immediately and updates the page, so you do not have to wait for the next scheduled check. It reports what Cloudflare says; it does not make Cloudflare validate any faster. If DNS has not propagated yet, pressing it repeatedly changes nothing.

We check your DNS for you¶

While a domain is Pending, every check (the automatic one and Check now) also looks at your public DNS and adds plain-English hints to the page. They say what is wrong and what to enter, for example "No CNAME record was found for events.example.org; add one pointing to customers.letsrevel.io", or that the records were created under the doubled name events.example.org.example.org because your DNS provider appends your domain to the name you type. Revel also warns when your CAA records block Let's Encrypt, when the hostname is a root domain, and, whenever it finds a problem, tells you which DNS provider hosts your domain and links its "add a record" help page. If your DNS is at Cloudflare, create the CNAME as DNS only (grey cloud). The hints come from public DNS, so they lag behind your changes by the usual propagation time, and they disappear on their own once the problem is fixed. A domain that is already Active is not checked this way.

Troubleshooting¶

The page shows the problems Cloudflare reported at the last check, and the DNS hints described above, as plain messages. Typical causes:

Removing or re-requesting a domain¶

Use Remove on the custom domain page. Revel deletes the hostname from Cloudflare and frees it, and your attendee pages go back to the Revel address. The platform forgets the domain within about a minute, and anyone signed in on it is signed out.

A Failed domain does not need to be removed first. Request the same or a different hostname again and Revel retires the failed one for you. A removed domain cannot be brought back, but you can request the same hostname again as a new request.

A domain does not hold its hostname forever. A Pending domain whose ownership is still not proven 7 days after the request turns Failed (you get the usual email, and the page says "Ownership of the hostname was not proven within 7 days."). A Failed domain that nobody requests again is removed after another 7 days, which frees the hostname for anyone else. After either, request the domain again to start over.

What attendees experience¶

Their own login per domain. Browsers keep sessions per address, so someone signed in to Revel who opens events.example.org is asked to log in there. It is the same Revel account (same email and password, same data) and each domain simply has its own session. On a custom domain the sign-in lasts for the browser session, and it ends as soon as the domain is removed, fails or is switched off by the platform. Single sign-on buttons are not shown on custom domains.

Links go to your domain. Once the domain is active, links in attendee emails (ticket, payment confirmation, invitation, event updates and reminders) point at it. Visiting your organization, event or series on the Revel address redirects to the same page on your domain. Your organization admin pages stay on Revel.

Paying. Checkout is Stripe's hosted page, branded by your own Stripe account. When the attendee finishes or cancels, Stripe sends them to a Revel address, which forwards them straight back to the same event on your domain with their payment result. They may notice the Revel address for a moment. They are never left on it.

Seated events and guests. If your event has a seat map, guests (people without a Revel account) can pick and hold seats, check out and confirm by email on your custom domain, exactly as on the Revel address.

Account emails and why they link to Revel¶

Emails that carry a login-sensitive link always go to Revel's own site, not your domain. This covers email verification, password reset, email change confirmation, account deletion confirmation and unsubscribe links. When someone signs up or resets a password from your domain, the email they get links to Revel, and after they confirm, Revel takes them back to your organization's page.

The reason is security. Those links contain a single-use token that works for the person's Revel account on every organization, not only yours. You control your domain's DNS, so you could in principle point it at any server. If the token links led to your domain, anyone who controlled a custom domain could trigger a password reset for any Revel user and collect the token. Keeping these links on Revel closes that door for every organization, including yours. The email's branding (organization name and logo) can still be yours. Only the link target is fixed.

One deliberate exception: the confirmation link in a guest RSVP or ticket email points at your domain. That token is single-use, scoped to one RSVP or ticket on your own event and gives no login session.

Showing your events on your own website¶

Your custom domain is a full site of its own; it is not meant to be framed. Browsers refuse to show it inside an <iframe> on another website, because every Revel page forbids framing to protect your attendees from clickjacking (a hidden page tricking them into clicking buttons). If you want your events inside an existing website, use the embed instead: organization admin → Embed gives you a snippet for your event list, a single event or a series. It is built to be framed, uses your colors and links into your custom domain. Link to your custom domain for everything else.

Custom scripts such as analytics or tracking pixels can't be added to Revel pages, on your custom domain or anywhere else. The pages' content security policy only allows Revel's own scripts.

For developers integrating with the API¶

The brand endpoints need the edit_organization permission. The custom-domain endpoints are owner-only and do not accept third-party app tokens. See the generated API docs for the full schemas.