How to use your own domain with Blogger
Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Catherine in Blogging
There is a certain amount of insurance about having your blog at your own domain, rather than at somedomain.blogspot.com. If for whatever reason, Google decides that Blogger doesn’t fit into its business model and isn’t making enough money, it could decide to wind down the service. Unlikely, but possible. If this happens after your blog has generated heaps of backlinks to the blogspot.com address, you’ll lose all those backlinks. It is also possible that Google might remove your account if it thinks you’ve breached its terms and conditions. Having your own domain can also look more professional.
Theoretically, you can have the ease of having a Blogger blog and still use your own domain using a technique called “mapping” where your domain name is made to point to your Blogger blog. So any posts at your Blogger blog will look like they are being hosted at your domain.
We say “theoretically” because we haven’t found Google’s redirect service to work that well, and a quick search of Google will confirm that this is quite a common problem. We did manage to get it to work, but after a few different attempts.
We’d recommend that you make the choice to use your own domain early on because if you can’t get the mapping to work, you can just use another blog service and you don’t have to worry about losing audience.
There are two ways of doing the mapping, you can purchase your domain directly from Google and they will do all the setting up of the mapping for you automatically or you can purchase your domain separately and do the changes yourself. We’ll go through both options.
OPTION 1: Buy your domain from Google
1. Login into your Blogger account. Go go to your blog’s settings and click on “Publishing”. Click on “Switch to Custom Domain”.
2. When you click on “Switch to Custom Domain”, you’ll immediately be given the option to purchase a domain from Google. It costs $10/year, comes with private registration and is automatically set up with email through Google Apps. But bear in mind that Google’s domain registration partner is GoDaddy.com and there has been some bad press about their policies.
This is the simplest option, you just need to enter a domain name, check it is available, fill in your details pay for it. It will then be automatically mapped to your Blogger domain and all your posts on your old somedomain.blogspot.com blog will be redirected to your new blog address.
If you do have problems, you should contact Godaddy.com’s support.
OPTION 2: You already own your domain
If you have registered your domain name then you’ll have to set up the domain name mapping manually. We tested a few methods and found the following to work, but follow it carefully as all the other methods did not work. If you have any problems, you should put in a help ticket to your domain registrar’s support.
Namecheap instructions
We are going to go through the steps using NameCheap because they are our recommended domain registrar, also Google doesn’t list them in their mapping instructions. If you are using another registrar – have a look at Google’s list of registrar instructions to see if they are there or else try using Google’s general instructions if not. Note that people have reported following Google’s instructions but haven’t been able to get the mapping to work. Just remember, you should be able to email your domain registrar for help – and if not, transfer your domain to a registrar that will give you support.
1. First we need to set up the DNS (Domain Name System) settings at your domain registrar – these settings tell the internet where to send your visitors when they type your address into their internet browser.
So go to your domain registrar, in this case Namecheap and login.
2. Select your domain.
3. Once you’ve selected your domain, you’ll get a number of options to modify your domain in the right hand column. Select “All Host Records”.
4. You should already have a listing for “www” that is set up as “CNAME (Alias)” – this should be the parking page that NameCheap has set up as a placeholder for your domain name.
You will want to edit it so that the IP Address/URL field for “www” says “ghs.google.com” like so:
Make sure the record type drop down is set to CNAME (Alias) if it isn’t already. What this does is tells the internet that when someone types in “www.somedomain.com” they are to be sent to google (at which point google will tell them to go to your blog when that part has been set up).
5. Note that this will only work when someone types in “www.somedomain.com” NOT when someone types in “somedomain.com” without the “www”. The “www” a little bit of redundant internet protocol that many people say should be removed but it hasn’t yet so some people will type in ”www.somedomain.com” and others will type in ”somedomain.com” – you want both these groups of people going to your website.
That’s where the “@” setting comes in – it just gives directions when someone comes to your domain without the “www” – that is, they type in ”somedomain.com”. By default, NameCheap should have the “@” setting to “URL Redirct” and the IP Address/URL to your domain name with the “www” – that is, “http://www.somedomain.com” like so:
Check this is the case and that it points to your “www” domain name (including the “http://” part or it will not work) – if not change it so that it does and make sure the record type is “URL Redirect”.
Save the settings.
6. THIS IS A REALLY IMPORTANT STEP. Your domain registration should be now properly set up for the mapping but you may need to wait up to 48 hours for this change to be recognised by the “internet”. You should not ask Blogger to map your domain (Step 
until the internet recognises that you are pointing to the Google.
If you’re on Windows, one way of checking this is to click on Start and then hit “Run”.
You will get a popup, type “cmd” into it and hit “OK”.
Remember to breath from your diaphragm and don’t worry about what you’re about to see, yes it looks all codey, but just follow the instructions and everything will be okay. 
When you get the pop up just type in “ping www.yourdomain.com” – of course, replacing “www.yourdomain.com” with whatever your domain is. It should look a bit like this:
Hit Return/Enter and it will activate the ping.
If you get something like this, where it says “Pinging ghs.1.google.com” or something similar with “ghs.google.com” in it then you know it worked.
If you don’t get this then your changes haven’t been recognised, so you’ll need to wait a bit longer.
If you’re on a Mac, here are some instructions on how to ping.
7. Once you are sure that the changes have come through (and don’t try before!) you need to tell Blogger to map your blog to your domain name.
Go back to your Blogger account. Go go to your blog’s settings and click on “Publishing”. Click on “Switch to Custom Domain”.
When you click on “Switch to Custom Domain”, look for “Already own a domain? Switch to advanced settings” and click on that link.
8. Enter your domain name in the form “www.yourdomain.com?”. (While these instructions DO NOT cover setting up subdomain mapping, note that you can use subdomains like blog.somedomain.com but you can’t enter the address for a subfolder like www.somedomain.com/blog.)
If you have a new blog, keep “Use a missing file host?” at the default “No” (this setting is only useful if you had files on a subdomain of your blog domain – don’t worry if you don’t really understand this, if you don’t then this is probably not relevant anyway).
Save the settings.
9. Once, you’ve saved, you might notice Google giving you the option to “Redirect yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com” – whatever you do, DO NOT select this option!!! It will break your blog redirect and cause you untold amounts of pain.
You already set up a redirect of your domain without the “www” to the version with the “www” in Step 5. If you click this option, it will set up an infinite loop of redirects and just not work.
So don’t do it, walk away slowly and don’t look back.
10. If you followed these instructions and waited in Step 6 until the redirect change was recognised, then when you type in your domain name (either with or without the “www”) you should see your Blogger blog.
If you don’t after a reasonable amount of time – put in a support ticket with your domain registrar.
Recommended Services
