Here's how to create your own redirect page:
- Copy the whole text in the box below and paste into a simple text editor such as Notepad. Change the text in red to reflect your true blog address, and the text in blue to something which better suits your needs.
<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8; url=http://www.yoururlhere.com" /> </head> <body bgcolor="#cceedd"> <center> <p> <font color="#446666"><b>Your text and images here</p> <p>For example: My blog is located at www.mydomain.com. You will be redirected to my blog in about 8 seconds. Please update your bookmarks to reflect this new address. </p> </body> </html>
- Take note of this line:
meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8;
The "8" means that the browser will wait 8 seconds before redirecting to your true blog address, just enough time for the visitor to read the text and understand the reason for the redirection. You can change this to "0" instead, which means that the redirect would be immediate, and the visitor would be unaware of the change in web address unless they look at the address bar. However, it is good practice to have at least the URL of your true blog address in the body of the page as some older browsers do not recognise the redirect function and would be unaware that your blog is not hosted here. - You should also change the font and background colours to suit your tastes and blog colour scheme/branding. Images can also be displayed in the body section of the page (between <body>> and </body>)
- Now, save this file to your computer with the file name "index.html". It is very important that you name it such, as this needs to be the page which loads when a visitor types http://yourblog.com into their web browser.You can preview this in your own browser to check the page looks okay, and you should be redirected to your true online blog address within the time you specified in the meta section.
- Now, you need to upload this to the root of the folder where visitors would visit your blog. If you have purchased a custom domain for your Blogger blog, for example, you would upload this to the root of your hosting account. If you are uploading to a previously used sub domain at http://blog.yoursite.com this may be the root of the folder named "/blog/".
- Go online to your redirect page address (eg: http://yourblog.com/index.html) and check that the redirection works. Then all you have to relax and know your visitors will be able to find you!
If you have purchased a custom domain for use with a Blogger blog, you should find that your domain provider will provide at least enough room for a single web page, which you can use to upload your redirect page. I use GoDaddy for domains, as this company provides free hosting, personal email address and other features of great use to Bloggers. (Just in case you're wondering, I don't get paid to recommend GoDaddy; but of all the domain providers I've ever used, this company is simply the best value I've found!).
If you have any problems setting up your redirect page, feel free to contact me directly for more detailed help.
Related posts:
- How to set up your free GoDaddy hosting account
- How to set up your Blogger custom domain with GoDaddy
Technorati Tags: custom+domain | domains | redirect | page | index+page |
24 Comments:
hello amanda! I have understood how to do this, but where in Godaddy do I do this? Do I go to the hosting control center? What should I do after that?
What I mean is that I have understood what you need to do but where do I upload the file? Where do I create a index.html? Can you post the details on how to upload it the notepad to Godaddy? Thank you so much, you have been very very helpful!!!
Hello Miss Nice,
You need to create the redirect file, "index.html" on your computer and upload this to your hosting account with GoDaddy via FTP. A few people have asked me about this now, so I've just created a post explaining how to set up your free (ad-supported) hosting account with GoDaddy. The free hosting doesn't automatically show in your account settings, so you'd need to set this up. Hope this helps! If you need any more assistance, please send me an email so I can go through this with you in more detail (my contact link is in the header section).
Just wanted to give you a BIG THANK YOU for posting this very helpful information. Now my Blogger blog is set up with my own domain, and I have a redirect page in case someone doesn't include the "www". Perfect. Thank you again!!!
New blogger doesn't allow html. Is there any way to do this with xml?
Hello Ordinarygirl,
The redirect page isn't hosted on Blogger: you'd need to host this with the company you purchase your domain name from. Perhaps these posts will help you better understand what I mean:
How to set up your Blogger custom domain with GoDaddy
How to set up your Blogger custom domain
Hope this helps!
And you can always spice it up a little. Here's my take! :) (Unfortunately only in swedish but I think you will get the idea nevertheless.)
Nice posts by the way!
Thanks for the great instructions. It was driving me crazy that people couldn't reach my site without including "www."
great instructions. anybody have problems making the index.html file using textedit on a mac? i wasn't able to get my file working until i switched from my mac to my pc.
Hi Amanda, a little off/on topic but can a blog be redirected to another web site? I created a blog with a custom domain name, during that time I created a web site that I am almost finished with (wanted the blog to go live to to get some nice search engine placement so I used the custom domain for it) and now I want to revert back to the traditional blogger URL (.blogspot.com), use the domain name for the web site I have created and when someone clicks on my blog url it goes to my web site.. is this possibe using your method or does it only work for redireciting to the same blog? my domain is hosting by godaddy as well. Thanks.
It is a very good domain name for my real estate business and I do not want it to be used just as a blog. I guess basically I am trying to take advantage of the good search engine placement a blog naturally gets and having all visitors be redirected to my web site and basically not being going to my blog at all. Thanks.
Hello Mike,
It certainly is possible to do what you are asking, though the method is quite different from that which I explained in the above tutorial.
My advice would be to purchase some hosting with your GoDaddy account (which is very reasonable priced for the starter packages) and begin to build your website using this hosting which is associated with your current domain name. Then let go of the custom domain with Blogger by choosing to publish back to your Blog*spot domain, and reset the DNS settings in your GoDaddy dashboard (look for a link to revert the settings to default near the bottom of the page in your GoDaddy account).
Finally, you can add some code to the header of your Blogger template to create an automatic redirection to your custom domain name (and thus to your new website).
This code is basically the same as that described above:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="8; url=http://www.yoururlhere.com" />
Simply replace the URL with that of your domain name, and add this just after the opening <head> tag in your template.
Be sure to wait until the association between your blog and your custom domain has been completely dropped first though, otherwise you will create an unwanted loop which will constantly redirect your readers back and forth!
Hope this information is useful to you. Please feel free to contact me by email if you need more detailed advice.
Huge thanks Amanda..
I've been googling around and at last landed here.
It works with just one paste. Awesome!
Merry christmas Amanda!
Thanks for this tutorial. I had been wondering how to do that until i read this.
Hello, Amanda!
thanks a bunch for this post...This is what I have been surfing for all night...
Thanks Amanda for tutorial .. i wanna ask, can i delete letter :
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}} {\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.15.1507;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 \par }
Before redirect to my www. site.
waw many thanks amanda! i could have never done that alone! thanks for your help!
thanks, amanda, for your advices
that really helped me, now I have my site up and running ;)
you can't use this in blogger? you can't add meta http-equiv="refresh"....
:( any other way
Good post for blogger redirection..
http://sanhidainfo.blogspot.com/
Thank you so much for all of your guidance on using GoDaddy. It has been so great to use a custom domain and do a redirect page.
Question for you - with the free hosting they offer there are ads at the top of the redirect page. Any way around that?
Maybe by replacing the welcome.html?
Also, any pointers to good sites to see a list of html options for fonts, colors, etc.?
Thanks so much!!
Thank you for your tip
it was successful in my blog
thanking you again
Hi Amanda:
Thanks for excellent instructions. I have already done the 301 redirect (Steps one and two & three). However, in step 4, you are asking for saving index file. What is this file? How do you create this file? Is it the sitemap.xml? Can you please elaborate?
Thanks very much
Srini
nice post. but i have a question. suppose i upload a file http://theCisco.Net/abc.pdf
Then would i be able to download that file after making this redirection??
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