Please Help me with my Blogger Blog and Custom Domain

October 5, 2008 1:26 PM

Why might my Blogger blog not be working with my custom domain and how do I fix it?

Four days ago, I set up a blog at CUSTOMDOMAIN.blogspot.com and I own the url CUSTOMDOMAIN.com from GoDaddy. I followed the instructions here from Blogger so that people who visit the Custom Domain would see me Blogger blog. When I visit CUSTOMDOMAIN.com it just shows the godaddy.com parking page without the content from my blogspot blog.

In order to set up the domain I own with the blog I created a CNAME record for the domain (screenshot here, does this look right?) and changed the setting in my blogger setting panel to indicate that it is a custom url that I am using. I'm reasonably certain that I did everything in the blogger side ok, because when I visit CUSTOMDOMAIN.blogspot.com it redirects to CUSTOMDOMAIN.com, but with just the empty godaddy parking page.

Is there something I did wrong or something that I can fix so that my godaddy.com domain works with my blog?

Also, is it possible to set up a Google Apps account and then transfer this domain that I have purchased to that account so that blogger is handling both the domain and the blog? I see where I can purchase a new domain with Google Apps, but can I transfer one that I already own?

Also, I emailed godaddy tech support, and they sent a reply saying that it didn't look like a problem on there end.

posted by andoatnp to computers & internet (15 comments total)

I didn't realize the screenshot was so small. Here is a larger version.
posted by andoatnp at 1:28 PM on October 5, 2008

Do you get the same results when you go to www.customdomain.com as when you go to customdomain.com? It looks like you've set up a CNAME only for the www. subdomain.
posted by enn at 1:35 PM on October 5, 2008

When I visit http://www.CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/ it redirects to http://CUSTOMDOMAIN.com/ with the same empty page.

Do you know would I would need to do if I wanted to create a separate record on godaddy so that the domain without the www would also be associated with my blogspot blog? Thanks.
posted by andoatnp at 1:42 PM on October 5, 2008

You'd want to remove the A record for @, and create a CNAME for @ pointing to ghs.google.com, I think. Not sure how that's done on the GoDaddy interface.

However, if www.customdomain.com is giving you a redirect, maybe there's more going on. Do you mind posting the actual domain so that we can take a look?
posted by enn at 1:46 PM on October 5, 2008

Actually, if it's Blogger that's doing the redirect, maybe just fixing the @ records will be enough to fix it.
posted by enn at 1:48 PM on October 5, 2008

The domain is http://isjohnmccainstupidandcrazy.com/ and the blogger address is http://isjohnmccainstupidandcrazy.blogspot.com/
posted by andoatnp at 1:54 PM on October 5, 2008

I've recently pointed one of my GoDaddy domains at a Blogger site, and all I have set up in my Total DNS Control Panel are two CNAMES, one for customdomain.com and one for www, both pointing at ghs.google.com. My @ A record is even still pointing at whatever GoDaddy initially set it to.

Like this.
posted by JaredSeth at 1:59 PM on October 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

JaredSeth: What did you enter in the "Enter an Alias Name" field when you were creating the CNAME record for the CUSTOMDOMAIN.com entry? When I try isjohnmccainstupidandcrazy.com it gives me an error message.
posted by andoatnp at 2:10 PM on October 5, 2008

If it's like NameCheap's interface, you should enter @ there.
posted by enn at 2:12 PM on October 5, 2008

enn's got it. It's in the small print instructions above the C Name creation fields:

"Entering "@" will automatically insert your domain name as the host name for the CNAME Record"
posted by JaredSeth at 2:15 PM on October 5, 2008

When I try to create a new entry under the CNAME list with @ it gives me an error message "ERROR - Please enter a valid host name for the Alias Name field."

And when I try to modify the existing @ entry under A (host) to point to ghs.google.com it gives me the error message "Please enter a valid IP address for the Points To field."

Any idea what is up with that?
posted by andoatnp at 2:17 PM on October 5, 2008

Well an A record isn't going to accept an alias, so that's as it should be.

I just went back as a test and, since I'm not doing anything with the site yet, deleted and recreated the C Name record and it let me just use twoslides.com, no error. What error are you getting when you try that with yours?

Because I have some fuzzy recollection of having an issue the first time I did it.
posted by JaredSeth at 2:32 PM on October 5, 2008

I just did it again with the domain itself, isjohnmccainstupidandcrazy.com and it worked so now I have that and the www CNAME record. I'm not sure why I got the error the first time or if I had done something differently, but I guess it might be fixed now, considering that the www redirects to the domain without the www and now I have a CNAME record for the domain itself.

Thanks for the help you two.

If anyone else has any ideas, please let me know.
posted by andoatnp at 2:37 PM on October 5, 2008

Yeah, I just double checked with another unused domain too, andoatnp, and used the www-less domain. Not sure why you got the error the first time. Also make sure when changing the settings at Blogger to check the box for Redirect www.customdomain.com to customdomain.com or vice versa.
posted by JaredSeth at 2:43 PM on October 5, 2008

And now it's working... problem definitely solved. Thanks again.
posted by andoatnp at 2:44 PM on October 5, 2008