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January 5, 2007

Google-Hosted Blogs, on Your Own Domain

If you wanted to enjoy all the features of the new Blogger, but also have your own domain, now you can. Follow these instructions: buy a domain, create a CNAME record for your domain and select "switch to custom domains" in your blog's settings.

Google will continue to host your posts and pictures, so you don't need to buy a hosting service. The old .blogspot.com address will redirect to your new domain. This way, you'll keep your visitors and the beloved search engine rankings.

There's also the option of using FTP publishing, but you need to pay for hosting, and you'll also miss features like: dynamic serving, managing layouts using drag-and-drop. The advantage is that you have more control.

Although Blogger is not yet a part of Google Apps for Your Domain, it will certainly be included.

20 comments:

  1. Google is missing one thing now and that one thing is a Photoblog. It's hugh and growing and google doesn't seem to realize that. Galleries are out, photoblogs are in.

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  2. Uhhh. The original blogger.com supported this.

    I used Blogger with my personal domain and published to my personal server circa 2001.

    I moved to WordPress and imported my Blogger entries, but here is a link from 2005:

    http://paulbegley.com/Blogger/2005/04/dhcpeximexe-dhcp-database-export.htm

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  3. Yes, Paul, that's called FTP publishing and it's been available for a long time.

    "There's also the option of using FTP publishing, but you need to pay for hosting, and you'll also miss features like: dynamic serving, managing layouts using drag-and-drop. The advantage is that you have more control."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds like a cool idea ... but are there any downsides?

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  5. It's mostly good but if your dns record sends your domain traffic to blogspot thats great for your blog but you won't be able to use your domain for anything else (other webpages, forums, galleries, etc.). If your blog is just one section of an overall website this option won't help you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mike, what you say is not accurate. From Blogger help:

    "You can use this feature with domains (e.g. mysite.com) or subdomains (e.g. name.mysite.com). However, you cannot specify subdirectories (e.g. mysite.com/blog/)."

    So you can create a subdomain like: blog.mysite.com and use it only for your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  7. If I use my own domain and still use free Blogger hosting, is it guaranteed that I will not lose my PR and my technorati ranking, technorati links and technorati favorite votes? I don't want to risk anything as it took a lot of effort to get them.

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  8. I don't think Technorati is smart enough to deal with redirects, so you may lose your Technorati rankings (but who cares about them?). The PageRank should be the same, all the old links should still work.

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  9. incompatible with hosted google apps. Can't even create a blogger account using my google apps login. Also heard a lot about 404 errors in various newsgroups when trying to combine these two google solutions.

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  10. Blog*Spot to a Custom Domain

    In this case, Blogger continues to host all your content, and the only thing that changes is the address that points to it. Since the address is no longer on blogspot.com, the referrer restriction mentioned above will still apply, meaning images over 400px will not display on your page. However, most thumbnails will be below this and will still link correctly to the full-sized images.

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  11. 400px image restriction really sucks!

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  12. 400px image restriction is bad!
    I have a older blogspot, many many big photos, and i can see nothing!!!

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  13. I wholeheartedly agree with you.

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  14. Ok, Just not able to figure out, once i shift to blogger provided domain. Will i be able to log in to blogger.com to make entry, change layouts etc.?

    Where can i get the detailed information on this,

    thanks in advance for your help!!

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  15. Yes, everything is the same, except that the blog will be available on a separate domain.

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  16. It's mostly good but if your dns record sends your domain traffic to blogspot thats great for your blog but you won't be able to use your domain for anything else (other webpages, forums, galleries, etc.). If your blog is just one section of an overall website this option won't help you.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Thanks to goooogle.....
    Nice post! very interesting topic. keep on posting.
    mba distance learning

    ReplyDelete
  18. Okay, question for everyone/anyone -- I've been using a blog set up as a website on my custom domain through Blogger (i.e. Blogspot) for about a year but am really tired of the limited options, etc that Blogger/Google provides for layout and website options. So here's my question: Is there a particular server name (or a way to find the one pertaining to my particular domain) that I can upload to via FTP? See, I've done a lot of researching, etc. through my DNS settings and all, but can't seem to find the actual individual server name by which to upload. Is it simply impossible to upload onto my current domain through FTP if I continue to have Blogspot host it? Am I going to have to self-host in order to be able to upload using FTP?

    I built a great website using iWeb and honestly, it's a LOT cleaner and functional than my current Blogger 'website', but I can't upload it. Any help will be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks in advance!

    ReplyDelete
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