Changing Your Custom Domain - The Next Chapter

We see some blog owners deciding to change their custom domain URLs - and discovering an unexpected limitation, in re indexing the blog, under the new URL

I received email from Google, advising that my previous domain is pulling up a number of 404 errors. I've noticed that these are for individual blog posts.

When you change one custom domain to another, you may not see the domain re indexed, transparently.

Changing a Blogger blog, from one custom domain to another, is a reasonably simple project - if you're able to plan the change.

A domain change should involve simply re indexing the blog.

A simple custom domain name change involves republishing the blog, under a new domain. Retaining readers, and search engine access, requires slightly more work.

Renaming a custom domain - if it involves a BlogSpot rename - becomes significantly more complicated.

Renaming a custom domain - and having the individual post URLs in the old domain working, after the change - will require slightly more effort, than any of the above requirements.

With GoDaddy, using specific settings, you may be able to forward post URLs.

In one forum topic, a domain owner was able to forward a domain, using instructions provided by GoDaddy - so individual post URLs redirect properly.

In the GoDaddy domain settings for the old (original) custom domain, activate Domain Forwarding.

1. Set the "Forward to:" address to the new custom domain.
2. Choose the Redirect Type as "301 Permanent".
3. Choose the Forward Settings as "Forward only".

This may not be the effect seen, by all blog owners. Not all registrars will provide this ability.

This is the GoDaddy DNS wizard, as of 2016.



If your domain was not registered by GoDaddy, you will have a different wizard - and most likely, ""Forward only" will be a different option. Maybe, "Forward without masking" will be a useful description.

Blogger does not support redirection, from blog URL to blog URL.

Blogger does not support redirection, between BlogSpot or custom domain URLs - as transparent redirection would simply encourage spam activity. Any redirection, from the old custom domain, has to be provided by the domain registrar.

Most registrars provide simple DNS forwarding, from one domain to another - if you are able to pay for both domains, simultaneously. Generally, most registrars will setup forwarding, from the old domain to the new published blog URL.

Not all blog owners may get the redirection, for their domain, correct.

With a domain forwarded to the published URL - using most registrar provided instructions - readers who click on the URL to a specific post, using the old domain URL, will find themselves unexpectedly viewing the blog home page, under the new domain. This will cause some confusion.

Search engine bots won't find a specific blog post, under the new domain.

A search engine bot, indexing a specific post, using the old domain URL, will be redirected to the blog home page, under the new domain URL. This will not enhance indexing of the blog.

Some search engine bots may report this as a "404 Not Found" - and blog reputation will suffer.

Here's an example of the problem.

The specific post URL ("www.chloellio.co.uk/2016/05/ fashion-river-island-plus.html") redirects to the main page ("www.chloeincurve.com").



For most obvious benefit, "www.chloellio.co.uk/2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html" should redirect to "www.chloeincurve.com/2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html" - not to the blog main page "www.chloeincurve.com".

Let's look at an HTTP trace. This shows an individual post in the blog, with forwarding provided by GoDaddy.

http://www.rexswain.com/cgi-bin/httpview.cgi?url=http://www.chloellio.co.uk/2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html&uag=Mozilla/5.0+(X11%3B+CrOS+armv7l+7978.66.0)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/50.0.2661.91+Safari/537.36&ref=http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html&aen=&req=GET&ver=1.1&fmt=AUTO

Sending request:

GET /2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.chloellio.co.uk
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 7978.66.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.91 Safari/537.36
Referer: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
Connection: close
• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 79.170.40.4
• Finding TCP protocol...
• Binding to local socket...
• Connecting to host...
• Sending request...
• Waiting for response...
Receiving Header:

HTTP/1.1·302·Found
Date:·Sun,·15·May·2016·17:17:57·GMT
Server:·Apache/2.2.24·(Red·Hat)
Location:·http://chloellio.co.uk/2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html

http://www.rexswain.com/cgi-bin/httpview.cgi?url=http://chloellio.co.uk/2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html&uag=Mozilla/5.0+(X11%3B+CrOS+armv7l+7978.66.0)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/50.0.2661.91+Safari/537.36&ref=http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html&aen=&req=GET&ver=1.1&fmt=TXT

Sending request:

GET /2016/05/fashion-river-island-plus.html HTTP/1.1
Host: chloellio.co.uk
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 7978.66.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.91 Safari/537.36
Referer: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
Connection: close
• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 79.170.40.4
• Finding TCP protocol...
• Binding to local socket...
• Connecting to host...
• Sending request...
• Waiting for response...
Receiving Header:

HTTP/1.1·302·Found
Date:·Sun,·15·May·2016·17:17:58·GMT
Server:·Apache/2.2.24·(Red·Hat)
Location:·http://www.ChloeInCurve.com

http://www.rexswain.com/cgi-bin/httpview.cgi?url=http://www.ChloeInCurve.com&uag=Mozilla/5.0+(X11%3B+CrOS+armv7l+7978.66.0)+AppleWebKit/537.36+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/50.0.2661.91+Safari/537.36&ref=http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html&aen=&req=GET&ver=1.1&fmt=TXT

Sending request:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.ChloeInCurve.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 7978.66.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.91 Safari/537.36
Referer: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
Connection: close
• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 74.125.28.121
• Finding TCP protocol...
• Binding to local socket...
• Connecting to host...
• Sending request...
• Waiting for response...
Receiving Header:

HTTP/1.1·200·OK(CR)

<meta·content='blogger'·name='generator'/>
<link·href='http://www.chloeincurve.com/favicon.ico'·rel='icon'·type='image/x-icon'/>
<link·href='http://www.chloeincurve.com/'·rel='canonical'/>
<link·rel="alternate"·type="application/atom+xml"·title="ChloeInCurve·-·Atom"·href="http://www.chloeincurve.com/feeds/posts/default"·/>
<link·rel="alternate"·type="application/rss+xml"·title="ChloeInCurve·-·RSS"·href="http://www.chloeincurve.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"·/>
<link·rel="service.post"·type="application/atom+xml"·title="ChloeInCurve·-·Atom"·href="https://www.blogger.com/feeds/5573572064729110417/posts/default"·/>
<link·rel="me"·href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/03895481660022671513"·/>
<link·rel="openid.server"·href="https://www.blogger.com/openid-server.g"·/>
<link·rel="openid.delegate"·href="http://www.chloeincurve.com/"·/>

Even if the domain, redirected to the new domain home page, does not generate a "404", blog reputation will not benefit. An individual post, will not be indexed immediately, when hidden behind the home page.

Not all registrars will help you change domain URLs - and retain post URLs.

If you are going to change custom domain names - and transparently redirect readers and search engines, you will need the extra effort, as described above.

Alternately, simply forward the domain, to the published Blogger URL (generally, the "www" domain host) - then concentrate on getting the blog re indexed, under the new URL. Once the blog is completely indexed under the new domain URL, people won't bookmark the old domain - and the new domain URL will be the reference, for the blog. That's what you want, at the end of the day.

Your readers will see the home page of the blog, when clicking on individual posts, indexed under the old domain URL. Then add a Featured Post, mentioning the domain change - and maybe setup one or both blog searches, for reader convenience.

---

It's possible to redirect a #Blogger blog, as published under a custom domain, to a new domain. It's not always possible to transparently redirect an individual post URL, to the new domain, however.

If you change your custom domain, you may have to expect some problems from readers and search engines.

https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/blogger/ZiozKZOS07Q/discussion

https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/blogger/9rTL7U2ZMvU/discussion

https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/blogger/Yd5qUg77wUw/discussion

Choose Your Registrar, When Buying A Domain

When you purchase a domain - either as part of the "Buy a domain" wizard, or when you purchase directly from a registrar - you are free to use any registrar that you wish, for the purchase. The "Buy a domain" wizard (which should be your preferred method of purchase) lets you use either eNom or GoDaddy - and which registrar you use is your choice - though the choice is not made obvious, by the wizard layout.

The selection of which registrar to use, in "Buy a domain", is always your decision - though the selection process is somewhat obscure. Just go slowly, and look carefully for the right link.

Start from the Good News display. Find the tiny link at the bottom - "Learn more", next to the name of the chosen registrar.


And, there it is. If you don't like the choice made for you, pick the other.



The choice is right there - you just have to know where to look.

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Server Changes At GoDaddy, And FTP Publishing Problems

Publishing a Blogger blog by FTP, to a third party server, presents a challenge, may I risk making an understatement. Bloggers choosing to host their blogs externally have traditionally been subject to numerous experiences, not all good. One of the least enjoyed is possibly seeing the advice

Your publish is taking longer than expected. To continue waiting for it to finish, click here.

It appears that a recent server change (some time in the last 3 to 6 months) at GoDaddy may be at least partially responsible for some of the FTP Publishing experiences, such as the latter advice.

GoDaddy appears to have 3 server configurations right now.

1. Linux, "hosting configuration 1.0", PHP 4.x.
2. Linux, "hosting configuration 2.0", PHP 5.x.
3. Windows, ASP.Net 1.1, IIS 6.0 .

In at least one case, service moved from Linux configuration 1.0 to configuration 2.0 appears to be related to the symptom discussed above.

According to the Original Poster in the thread linked above, service migrated from Linux V1.0 to Linux V2.0 is not reversible. That's not an unusual restriction for any IT service methodology. Unfortunately, that left him with the sole option of moving to the third configuration, hosting on a Windows platform. People changing from Linux to Windows server hosting (or vice versa) should be aware of some significant technical differences between the two platforms, such as (but probably not only) differences in case sensitivity and in path description.

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Custom Domains - The Details In The DNS Settings

I've been helping people set up their custom domains for over a year now. We've dealt with simple setups, and complex setups - from a domain setup in 5 minutes using "Buy A Domain For Your Blog", to ones that take much longer because the domain itself is in use and requires Google Apps configuration. Occasionally, odd questions come up

Chuck, what is "3600"?

or

Does my blog have to be published to either "mydomain.com" or "www.mydomain.com"?

or

Do I have to point the blog to "ghs.google.com"?

The latter question wasn't easy to answer intelligently, basically I answered

You can point the DNS to any host name that you wish, but if you want a working custom domain, stick to "ghs.google.com", and lets get this done.

For an answer to the first two questions, and others, let's look at the setup process. Within the setup process, let's look at how this blog, "blogging.nitecruzr.net" is defined as a logical host in my domain, "nitecruzr.net".

If you're here looking for instructions on getting rid of the address entry for the recently decommissioned Google Apps server, see The GoDaddy Domain Manager: Removing An Address Entry.

You start with the GoDaddy Domain Manager, with the domain loaded. In this example, my domain is "nitecruzr.net". Once you're logged in, you do not re enter the domain name when you add an alias. Only enter the alias name, when prompted for "Alias".

Add One Virtual Host

blogging.nitecruzr.net. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

Simply hit the "Add New CNAME Record" button, and you get the "CNAME (Alias)" applet.

• The Alias Name you enter as "blogging".
• The Host Name you enter as "ghs.google.com".
• TTL for .net domains defaults to 1 hour (3600 seconds).

Having successfully created the new CNAME record, we see it listed with the others.

• Host is "blogging".
• Points To is "ghs.google.com".
• TTL is 1 hour.

Add One Complete "SubDomain"

Some folks refer to this as a "subdomain", though it's actually 5 virtual hosts. This example shows an ASymmetrical DNS configuration.

nitecruzr.net.  3600 IN A 216.239.32.21
nitecruzr.net.  3600 IN A 216.239.34.21
nitecruzr.net.  3600 IN A 216.239.36.21
nitecruzr.net.  3600 IN A 216.239.38.21
www.nitecruzr.net. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

Do you see the 3 "@" entries for IP addresses "64.233.179.121, 66.249.81.121, and 72.14.207.121", in the "A (Host)" section? That's the 3 Google Apps servers previously defined for the primary domain ("@"). If you were setting the domain up initially, you would hit the "Add New A Record" button 3 times 4 times, and enter the 3 servers (as of 2008/12, we have 4 Google Apps servers - the 3 are now offline), using "@" to designate the primary domain, each time. You would next add a "CNAME" for the "www" alias, pointing to "ghs.google.com", using "www" to designate the "www" alias.



Note: When you define the destination of "ghs.google.com", be aware of whether your DNS host is configured to accept "ghs.google.com" as an absolute or a relative address. This is an essential distinction, and may not be universal.

Now, let's examine a brief Dig log for the new alias, "blogging.nitecruzr.net".

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;blogging.nitecruzr.net. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
blogging.nitecruzr.net. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
ghs.google.com. 586847 IN CNAME ghs.l.google.com.
ghs.l.google.com. 203 IN A 72.14.207.121

blogging.nitecruzr.net. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. This was provided by my DNS server, after I entered it above.

• "blogging.nitecruzr.net." is the defined host name. The "." at the end makes it an absolute host name. You will always define an absolute host name.
• "3600" is the TTL, in seconds. "3600" specifies a TTL of 1 hour.
• "IN CNAME" is the syntax which defines a "CNAME" referral.
• "ghs.google.com." is the referred host name, again specified as an absolute address.

ghs.google.com. 586847 IN CNAME ghs.l.google.com. This was provided by "ghs.google.com".

• "ghs.google.com" is further referred to "ghs.l.google.com".

ghs.l.google.com. 203 IN A 72.14.207.121 This was provided by "ghs.l.google.com".

• "ghs.l.google.com" currently refers to the server at "72.14.207.121". "ghs.l.google.com" is a load balancing proxy server. If the server at "72.14.207.121" had been offline or busy, you would have a different IP address here. This is why we always use a "CNAME" referral to "ghs.google.com" for a proper custom domain definition.

When you define your alias, you only add the first of the 3 records above. The latter 2 are provided by the Google servers.

The URL of this blog is "blogging.nitecruzr.net". If the DNS server that services your computer requests the IP address of the blog, it will be told, by the DNS server that services the blog, to "ask the host ghs.google.com". After "ghs.google.com" has provided an IP address, that address will be retained ("cached") by your local DNS server for 1 hour.

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The GoDaddy Domain Manager

Making any custom settings to your custom domain, beyond what is done by the "Buy A Domain" wizard, involves the eNom / GoDaddy Domain Manager. If you bought your domain on your own, you might have chosen eNom, GoDaddy, or any of dozens other DNS hosts / registrars. Each domain manager will be different.

Once you're in the domain manager, what do you do? GoDaddy provides a lot of settings for managing your domain. eNom, the alternate Google partner in custom domain registration, has a Domain Manager that's similar only in result. Any other DNS host will have something still more different.

You may get to the Domain Manager directly (using a bookmark). If you bought the domain using "Buy A Domain" or Google Apps, you can alternately use the Google Apps "Advanced DNS settings" wizard. My domain is hosted by GoDaddy, and I bought it using "Buy A Domain".

Having entered your userid and password, successfully, you are presented with the "Domains" menu. Here you will see a list of your domains. Select one, by clicking on the link in the name.

This takes you to the "Domain Manager - Domain Details" screen, for your chosen domain. As of 2010/11/01, you'll see a menu bar, right in the middle of the screen. One of the buttons in the menu bar will be Forwarding. Click here, to setup a "301 Redirect". You may have a submenu, offering a choice to "Forward Domain" or "Forward Subdomain".

At the bottom of the screen, in the middle, will be a section labeled "Total DNS", with a "Launch" link. Click on "Launch", to setup "A" / "CNAME" referrals and other DNS control records.

If you're setting up a new domain, you'll use "Total DNS", and one or more "A" / "CNAME" records. If you're adding aliases to an existing domain, you can use either "Total DNS" or "Forwarding". While "Forwarding" has its place occasionally, 99% of the time you'll be using "Total DNS" for adding aliases.

Here, you may wish to peruse my other tutorials. Also, see (corrected) GoDaddy instructions, for setting up a custom domain.

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