Showing posts with label custom domains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label custom domains. Show all posts

How to use a custom domain name on your blog?







Note: The setup process for newly-purchased domains may take up to 24 hours.








Publishing on Blog*Spot is the fastest and easiest way to use all of Blogger's great features. (And for free, no less!) If you don't care to have blogspot.com in your blog's address, though, you can get a domain of your own. We'll continue to host all your content as before, but it will be displayed at your new address. (Unlike FTP publishing, which requires you to buy both a domain name and a hosting service.)

Choose and Register Your Domain
The first thing you'll need to do is to choose a domain name, like example.com and register it. You can register domain names from any of a number of different registrars, and you can use .com, .org, .net or any other valid addresses. Remember: you only need to get the domain name; you don't have to pay extra for hosting service. The easiest way to register a domain is to buy your domain directly through Blogger. If you go this route, we'll automatically configure all of your relevant DNS settings and attach your new domain to your existing blog immediately.

Update the DNS Settings
DNS stands for Domain Name System, and a DNS server determines what site a given address takes you to. So far, you have a domain name but none of the servers on the internet know what to do with it yet. To take care of this, you need to do two things:

•Create a CNAME record for your blog's address, which should be a subdomain of the form www.example.com.To create a CNAME record for your domain with the DNS, associating your domain with ghs.google.com. The exact procedure for doing this varies depending on your domain registrar, but you can find instructions for many common registrars here. If yours isn't listed, or if you run into other difficulties, you can contact your registrar directly and they'll be able to help you out.
•Create 'A' NAME records for your naked domain (blog.com)Creating A records for your naked domain is important as it allows Google to redirect people who use in your naked domain name (blog.com) to your blog page (www.example.com). If you do not do this, visitors who leave off the www will see an error page.
There are four separate A records you will create, and can be done from the same control panel you accessed your CNAME records. Simply point your naked domain (example.com, without the 'www') to each of the following IP addresses:




216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21




Your DNS setup is now complete!

Update Your Blogger Settings
Almost done! At this point, you have a domain name, and the DNS servers know to direct people to Google when they want to see your blog. But Google hosts lots of blogs, so we have to make sure the right one is associated with this domain. You'll do this on the Settings Publishing tab for your blog in Blogger.



If you're publishing on Blog*Spot, you'll see a link near the top offering to switch you to a custom domain. Go ahead and click that link.


The Blog*Spot Address setting now changes to Your Domain. Fill in the domain you registered, and then save your settings.


Now the only thing left to do is to tell everybody about your new address!

Notes:

•If your new domain isn't taking you to your blog, wait another day or two to make sure all the DNS servers have been updated. If it still isn't working, contact your registrar to make sure you entered the DNS settings correctly.
•Your original Blog*Spot address will automatically forward to your new domain. That way, any existing links or bookmarks to your site will still work.
•You can use this feature with domains (e.g. example.com) or subdomains (e.g. ). However, you cannot specify subdirectories (e.g. example.com/blog/) or wildcards (e.g. *.example.com).

Advantage of custom Domains For New Blogger

I have used Google Blogger (blogspot.com) for years and have been very happy so far. Google Blogger is extremely generous. Now Google Blogger have become even more generous by introducing New Blogger Custom Domain which allows you to register your own domain names so that you can have a URL which is your very own property (not a sub-domain of Blogger) and do not have the .blogspot.com at the end of the URL of your blog. Not only that, Blogger will host the blog for you for free!!!!

Of course you can chose to host your blog on your own, probably using a third party web host, but you will have to pay hosting fees, worry about getting a reliable web host with proper security, etc., getting enough bandwidth and if not sufficient for the amount of traffic your blog receive, pay for more bandwidth, get a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software to publish your posts via FTP, forced to use the old classic Blogger template and not the New Blogger template and thus miss out on all the new features that New Blogger has to offer, and a host of problems I would like to avoid.

I have stuck to using Blogger's sub-domain for up till now and you can read why at Why I never use custom domain (click BACK button to get back to this page). However, a recent discussion with another blogger budge me into registering some domain names.

Reasons:

1. I have been struggling with the question as to what happens to my blogs and all the hard work I put into them when the time comes when I am no longer able to update and maintain my blogs. None of my children has indicated any interest in taking over, and if they had, the interest was lukewarm.

2. With my own domains, they can choose to either continue with it or put it up for sale if it has good PageRank, have regular visitors and drawing good traffic. I was told John Chow's blog was either offered or sold for millions. I am not exactly aiming to become a millionaire, but becoming one is not going to hurt.

3. People have more respect for a top domain like

easyybloger.com

rather than a sub-domain like

easyyblogger.blogspot.com

It is rather like using your home address rather a real business address for your business. Now the PageRank of this blog is a very respectable PageRank 6 at the time of publishing, but the problem is the PageRank belongs to blogspot.com rather than to me. With your own domain names, the PageRank will belong to you and not to Blogger.

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