Today, Blogger announced that they support a feature called "Custom Domains". You can read the details in that post but here's the crux. If you own a domain called mywebsite.com and you want your blog (based on the new Layout template) to show up at that address, it is now possible. As you might know, FTP publishing can only be used with classic template and so, all the goodies that come with new Blogger were out of the reach of website owners so far. This limitation can be circumvented by using this new feature.
I thought I will take this feature for a road test! As you know, I host all my scripts at my website anniyalogam.com. What makes sense for people like me, who have other things in their website, is to make a subdomain point to a blog. I followed Blogger's instructions to do this. I first created a DNS record for the subdomain 'neo.anniyalogam.com' to point to 'ghs.google.com' (by the way, if you goto this address, it shows 404 error which is kinda wierd). It took about 10-15 minutes for the record to go active and my subdomain to display the decorated 404 error of ghs.google.com (I think Blogger should display some useful information in this page). Then, I re-published my Neo-demo blog at neo.anniyalogam.com. It works both way. Subdomain points to the blog and the blog points to the subdomain. So, any bookmarks using the old blogspot URL will still work (they will automatically be redirected to the subdomain). Kudos to Blogger for this nice feature! Now, if they can add php support to Blogger template, we can do wonders :0)
(Here's a hack update - Yogi has an improved random quote hack with which you can easily add/remove quotes. Visit his blog and pick up the hack if you are interested)
15 comments:
Cool to see it in action. Too bad I'm too cheap to even pay 10$ for a domain. :-) Maybe I should start a fundraiser?
That's great!!!
Unfortunately hasn't worked yet for me.
My sub domain is pointing to ghs.google.com and displays the 'decorated' Google 404 error page. If I change the Your domain field on the Publishing tab in Settings of the blog to the sub domain, it still comes up with the 404 error page and doesn't find the blog. I've waited a day and no change.
Any thoughts on why this is the case?
Phydeaux3, as such i don't know why I am paying every month for my website. but then, hundreds of blogs use the scripts there, so it's probably worth it. and recently, I have started uploading big (personal) videos there.
adamosh, I really don't know why it doesn't work for you. check with Blogger support.
Wowow, thank you with this information Ramani. I'm still confuse, meaning it is not necessary for us to use the FTP server? As long as we have our own domain then all of our files will be hosted at blogger?
If this is the case, I don't need to buy more space then from my webhost.
Please reply.
Raquel
Ramani, all of my questions have been answered from blogger buzz. Wow, this is great! Using the custom domain, we can still use the access control to our blog.
Thanks again for posting this information.
Yes, Raquel, that's right. It's also a good idea to keep an eye on Blogger Buzz.
Your new template is sooo coooool!!
i like it!
Blogger is not accepting publishing to my domain. It says "Another blog is already hosted at this address."
My blog is http://jamesonthecanal.blogspot.com and my recently purchased domain is www.jamesashburn.com. What can I do to make it work? What's wrong? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
I have switched over to the custom domain thing
http://virtualhost.in
James,
for Blogger to publish at an address, that address should not have any content but point to ghs.google.com. But, you seem to have some content in that URL. Can you follow the step named "DNS settings" in Blogger's instructions to make it point to ghs.google.com.
I know these work from personal experience. I tested it out with two domains and here are the results:
http://www.petsnamedotis.com
http://www.puppah.com
I think it's fantastic that they're doing this. My next step is to test it out on a subdomain with a developed site :)
Hi Ramani, I just currently moved my blog in custom domain from FTP server. I can't open my blog with this URL, http://raqmitch.com , but if I will put www, http://www.raqmitch.com or www.raqmitch.com it works fine.
I don't know if all who had moved to custom doamin have the problem.
If you have any idea, please let me know. Thanks! Raquel
Raquel, if I type raqmitch.com, firefox automatically redirects to www.raqmitch.com. maybe some browsers dont. but I think Protesto also faced such a problem.
I changed mine a while back only my domain is hosted by Lycos and Blogger weren't much help with changing the CNAME record there as they require the host IP Address not the Host name.
In fact the Lycos set up is very different from the help section they provide and it took a lot of searching and failed attempts to set it up, so wrote a help post for it myself, had a fair few search hits as well.
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