Connect Nucleus 1 Sermons With Your Nucleus 2 Website

Soon, Nucleus will introduce the new version of Sermons in the new Nucleus Dashboard. But today is not that day. Until then, we’ve outlined an interim solution on how to continue utilizing Sermons 1 while using Web 2. Between subdomains, custom CSS code, and managing navigation menu items, there are multiple steps to this process. But don’t worry! Just follow the steps laid out below and you’ll do just fine 😌

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

Stop! Have You Connected Your Custom Domain To Nucleus 2?

Before you begin actively working on linking your Nucleus 1 Sermons with your Nucleus 2 Website, you first need to have connected your custom domain to your Nucleus 2 Website.

We have an entire guide on how to Hook Up Your Custom Domain. Once you’ve followed those instructions, then come back to complete the rest of this guide.

Find The Perfect Subdomain

First thing’s first: before you do anything, you need to brainstorm what you want your Sermons 1 subdomain to be.

You might be wondering, “Wait - what is a subdomain?” Great question.

A subdomain is a version of your custom domain with a prefix added to it. This could be as simple as www.fakechurch.com, but can be more creative like sermons.fakechurch.com. (A real example is maps.google.com, where google.com is the root/naked domain, and maps is the subdomain.)

Since this particular subdomain you’re brainstorming is related specifically to your sermons archive, using sermons as your subdomain is a simple solution (not to mention, easy to remember). But feel free to think of something else that you think makes more sense. Some examples could be:

  • sermons
  • media
  • podcast
  • archive
  • recordings

Note: While most people will access your Nucleus 1 Sermons via a button or URL on your Nucleus 2 Website, you might want to run your desired subdomain by your church leadership, as you may announce or advertise the entire subdomain in other places where it’s clearly visible.

Create Your Subdomain & Add It To Your Nucleus 1 Sermons

Once you’ve landed on a subdomain, now it’s time to create it in your domain registrar’s system.

If you have an IT person on staff, this might be a task fit to pass onto them. But don’t worry - the instructions below should be more than enough to point you in the right direction 😎

Note: Because each domain registrar’s user interface is unique, the screenshots below might not look exactly like what you see. Thankfully, the principles and steps are almost universal across all domain registrars.

Once you’re logged into your domain registrar account, make your way to where you can manage/edit your DNS records for your custom domain.

Then, create/add a new record with the following information:

  • Type: A Record
  • Name: YOUR SUBDOMAIN (i.e. sermons)
  • IP Address / Value / Content: 159.89.233.110
  • TTL: 600 seconds (or as low as possible)

Once you’ve created your new subdomain, it’s time to add it to your Nucleus 1 Sermons.

To begin, login to your Nucleus 1 account here.

After you’re logged in, click on Settings in the top menu. Then select Custom Domain under Sermons in the left sidebar. Click here for a quick link.

Add your subdomain in the Custom Domain field in its entirety (e.g. sermons.reality.church, not just sermons).

Then click Add Domain.

Note: Adding a custom domain for your Sermons will change (and therefore break) your Sermons RSS feed URL. Don’t worry! We have instructions below on how to make sure your RSS feed doesn’t remain broken! But just keep in mind that, if you’re not ready or don’t have the time to follow the rest of these instructions just yet, we recommend waiting until you do before saving your custom domain for your Sermons.

Secure Your Subdomain

Once you’ve added a custom domain for your Nucleus 1 Sermons, you will need to request for us to install an SSL certificate on it to ensure it’s safe and secure. Don’t worry - it only takes us a moment to do this!

What’s an SSL certificate? A Secure Socket Layer protects any information on your site from being compromised by unapproved third parties. A domain has an SSL certificate installed when you see https:// in front of it in the address bar of your browser, instead of just http://. Search engines, like Google, favor websites with SSL certificates in their search results. More importantly, an SSL certificate helps prevent your website from being hacked. But don’t worry - we provide you with an SSL certificate for free!

[screenshot of realitybible.church in the browser address bar, showcasing the https:// – make sure the image is wide enough so it’s not super pixelated. Even if there’s just a bunch of dead spaces on the left or right, that’s okay]

Just send us an email to hello@nucleus.church letting us know you just updated your custom domain for your Nucleus 1 Sermons and are in need of an SSL certificate to be installed. (Oh, and don’t forget to let us know what the entire subdomain is. That’s super important for us to know 😄)

Redirect Your Old RSS Feed To Your New RSS Feed

Remember the warning we stated above that, by adding a custom domain to your Sermons settings would essentially break your RSS feed? Well, now is the time to fix that.

To do this, you’ll need two tabs open:

Right click on both links and select Open Link In New Tab so you can easily switch between the two Dashboards.

In your Nucleus 1 Dashboard, highlight the entire new Podcast RSS Feed URL, right click on it, and select Copy.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and paste the RSS feed in the New Feed URL field. Pasting your new RSS feed here will inform podcast platforms where your old RSS feed exists that the update to your RSS feed was intentional. Otherwise, they might still try to retrieve updates from the old RSS feed.

Don't forget to click Save Settings.

Note: Once all of your podcast platforms have switched and are using the updated RSS feed, it's actually helpful to remove the RSS feed from the New Feed URL field here, since at that point, the RSS feed is no longer "new".

Now, in your Nucleus 2 Dashboard, click + Add New to begin creating a redirect.

Set the redirect to 301 (Permanent). Then paste the Podcast RSS Feed URL that you copied from your Nucleus 1 Dashboard into the Redirect To field.

Once pasted, copy everything in that URL from media onward. Then paste it in the Redirect From field.

After that, click Add Now.

This is just an additional precaution to help ensure anywhere that your old RSS feed exists, it will redirect people to your new RSS feed.

Manage & Edit Your Nucleus 1 Navigation Menu

Because Nucleus 1 and Nucleus 2 are completely different entities, all your items in your Nucleus 1 navigation menu still link to all your pages on your Nucleus 1 website. But since you’re wanting to point people to your new Nucleus 2 website, you’ll want to make some changes to your navigation menu that’s accessible while viewing your Nucleus 1 Sermons page.

First, decide what items you want to keep and which ones you want to delete. After creating your navigation menu(s) in your Nucleus 2 website, you might need to reorganize and remake your Nucleus 1 navigation menu completely.

Since Sermons isn’t the main portion of your website, you could choose to only include some of the most important menu items in your Nucleus 1 navigation menu.

Or you could choose to mirror your navigation menus completely between your Nucleus 1 and Nucleus 2 accounts.

You could even choose to remove the Nucleus 1 navigation menu from showing on your Sermons page entirely.

There’s no wrong option. But one thing’s for sure, whatever navigation items you keep active in your Nucleus 1 account, you’ll want to make sure they take people back to pages on your Nucleus 2 website.

To do this, login to your Nucleus 1 account here. Then hover your cursor over Web and select Navigation. Click here for a quick link.

To remove any unwanted navigation items, click the checkbox beside each item. Then click Delete Selected. (Feel free to delete all of them and start from scratch, since none of them link out to your Nucleus 2 pages anyway.)

To add a new navigation item, click Create New Link. Or, to edit one that already exists, click the gear symbol on a particular menu item.

While creating a new item or editing an existing one, give your item a name. Then select External Link.

Here’s where you’ll want to paste the URL for a specific page on your Nucleus 2 website.

There are two ways to find the URL to a Nucleus 2 webpage.

In Your Browser's Address Bar

Go to your Nucleus 2 website in your browser and find the page you’re looking for. Then, copy the URL exactly from the address bar of your browser.

After that, go back to your Nucleus 1 Dashboard (where you were creating/editing your navigation item) and paste the URL in the External Link field.

In Your Nucleus 2 Dashboard

If you’d rather find the URL in your Nucleus 2 Dashboard, start by going to your Pages Panel in Nucleus Web. Click here for a quick link.

Find and click on the page you want to find the URL for to open the Page Editor.

In the Page Editor, select Share in the top menu. You should automatically be taken to As A Link in the left sidebar.

Click to Copy the URL for that page.

After that, go back to your Nucleus 1 Dashboard (where you were creating/editing your navigation item) and paste the URL in the External Link field (as shown above).

If you have other pre-existing navigation menu items, you can configure your navigation menu item to appear as a sub-navigation item in a dropdown menu.

Simply select from the drop-down menu under Add Under to choose from a pre-existing navigation menu item to choose which primary navigation item you wish your new item to appear under.

You can also check off on the option to have this item open in a new tab in your browser. It’s totally up to you how you want someone’s experience to be going back to your Nucleus 2 website.

After that, click Create This Link or Save.

Once you have all your navigation items linked to your Nucleus 2 webpages, feel free to reorder them by clicking on the Double Arrows on an item, dragging it up or down, and then releasing it in your desired position.

Lastly, click Save Changes once you’re happy with your new navigation menu that will appear on your Nucleus 1 Sermons page.

Customize The URL For Your Nucleus 1 Logo

Now you might be wondering, “Doesn’t the logo on my Nucleus 1 website take me to my Nucleus 1 homepage?” And you’d be correct!

That’s why, if you choose to keep your logo visible in the header of your Nucleus 1 website, you’ll want to include some custom CSS code to change the destination URL when you click on the logo.

To do this, click on Settings in the top menu of your Nucleus 1 Dashboard and then select Code Injection in the left sidebar. Click here for a quick link.

Then copy and paste the following code to the code injection field.

<script>
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) { 
document.querySelectorAll(".hero .pages-logo a").forEach(function(a) {a.href = "https://yourdomain.com";});
});
</script>

Make sure to replace https://yourdomain.com with your Nucleus 2 Web custom domain. (Make sure to keep the “” quotation marks too.)

After that, click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.

Now when someone clicks on your logo on your Nucleus 1 Sermons page, it will take them to your Nucleus 2 Web homepage.

Now that you have your Nucleus 1 navigation menu and logo sorted out, people can go back to your Nucleus 2 Website. But what about making sure people can get to your Nucleus 1 Sermons page in the first place?

Going back to your Nucleus 2 Dashboard, you’ll have to make a decision about where you want people to access your Sermons archive.

If you want people to access Sermons via your navigation menu, you’ll need to create and name a new item, select URL as the Action (Link), and paste your Sermons subdomain there in its entirety (for example, https://sermons.realitybible.church, not just sermons.realitybible.church)

We have an entire guide on how to Create Your Website Navigation Menu(s) if you need a refresher of how to do this.

In a similar way, you can create an Action/Button on a specific page by creating an Action, selecting URL, and pasting your Sermons subdomain there in its entirety (for example, https://sermons.realitybible.church, not just sermons.realitybible.church).

Of course, you’ll also want to add text to the button (that’s the CTA - or call to action) and select the style of the button.

Once done, click Add New Action.

We have an entire guide on how to Construct & Edit Your Web Pages. Feel free to peruse that if you need a refresher on how to edit a page.

What Next?

Wow. That was a lot of work. But now, people will still be able to access your sermons archive that’s still being hosted on Nucleus 1, and people can still listen to your content through your RSS feed without having to resubscribe to a new RSS feed.

Remember, this is only an interim solution until the new version of Sermons is introduced in Nucleus 2. At that point, we’ll have an entirely new guide to set that up. Until then, rest easy 😌

But if you’re raring to learn more, check out some of these articles to continue your journey with Nucleus 2:

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