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January 4, 2012 11:16 PM   Subscribe

How can I get my old custom domain AND my basic Blogger URL to both redirect to my new custom domain?

I opened a blog back in March on Blogger and bought a custom domain (through Google) for it, because I didn't like the .blogspot url. I was able to set up the new custom domain through Blogger's dashboard, under the Settings tab. What it said was that whenever someone typed my .blogspot URL, it would automatically redirect to my new domain.

Months of blogging later, my blog has gathered lots of readers! But the nature of the blog has changed from what I had intended when I first decided to open it. I decide give it a makeover and change the title, because the old title just didn't suit what it had become. I purchased a new custom domain yesterday (again through Google), and applied it to my blog through the Blogger's dashboard. Yay, everything is all shiny and new now.

The only problem is that I don't see a way to make my first custom domain redirect to the new one. This is a problem, because my blog posts show up in Google search results quite prominently BUT with the first custom domain. So, if you click on the blog post from the search results, you get a 404.

I don't want to lose potential readers because of this. I also don't want links to my blog from other people's blogs to suddenly be non-functioning. How can I set it up so that even if someone types in my old custom domain, they will still be redirected to my blog?

Thanks!
posted by joyeuxamelie to Technology (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: As it stands, typing in my basic .blogspot url does lead to my blog. So that issue is fine.
posted by joyeuxamelie at 11:17 PM on January 4, 2012


Ideally, Google would provide redirect options for your first custom domain, but I don't think they do. That's a service commonly offered by domain registrars though (despite the fact that it's technically unrelated to the domain name system), so perhaps you have some options if you can get through to your actual registrar.

I think Google uses eNom and/or GoDaddy as their partner registrar. Here are some instructions from Google on how to get through to your actual registrar. Those instructions are for Google Apps domains, but the principle is probably the same.

Once you're really in control of your domain name, obviously the idea would be to take advantage of a domain registrar's options for redirecting the URLs. Here are the instructions for GoDaddy and eNom. eNom explicitly mentions that they preserve the URL path to a specific page on your new site when forwarding the domain name. GoDaddy doesn't say--cross your fingers.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 1:08 AM on January 5, 2012


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