It used to be awkward to set up your Blogger custom domain to ensure that both the WWW and non-WWW versions of your URL pointed to your Blogger hosted blog. Now Blogger have introduced a great new feature: automatically redirect visitors from http://yourblog.com to http://www.yourblog.com! No more fiddling with the CNAME and A records in your domain's DNS settings as Blogger will now do the hard work for you!
Thanks to Mike I have just learned about this great new feature, which cuts out the need for manual redirection once you have initially set up your custom domain with Blogger.
Now, after setting up the DNS settings in your domain control panel, and registering your new URL with Blogger (see this post for full information), all you have to do is go to Settings>Publishing in your Blogger dashboard, and tick the box which is highlighted on the image below:
This setting ensures a flawless redirection from your non-WWW to your WWW blog URL, and most importantly, you will lose no visitors who accidentally key in your blog's URL without the WWW prefix.
If you currently make use of any free hosting provided by your domain agent, be sure that this redirection will not affect any existing files which are hosted in the root folder of your hosting account, as this redirection may make them inaccessible to you. For this reason, I won't be using this new feature myself, though I am very happy that Blogger have finally resolved this issue for bloggers who have little experience in setting up domains.
Now all we need is for Blogger to actually set up the custom domain for us, without the need to do this ourselves in the DNS settings...
Technorati Tags: blogger | custom | domain | set+up | redirect
24 Comments:
Holy Crap!
I spent the whole week giving poor "chris" at Google Apps support a headache complaining about this very same problem and here I learn they've come up with a solution.
Thanks for posting this.
Ok,
I take back my enthusiasm in my previous comment and go back to being skeptical.
I just tried to do the redirect thing and am told I already have a blog hosted at that domain.
The Google giveth and the Google taketh away. :0(
Which domain provider do you use? If I have any experience with your provider, I may be able to help :)
Hi Amanda,
Thanks for the offer to help. I used GApps and eNom and I've been talking to both teams all week begging for a solution to the non www url problem. I saw that you had to put up a place holder on your non www domain to deal with the issue.
The custom domain feature works perfectly with the www but doesn't work when someone visits the non www url. I just tried doing the suggestion from above and get an error message that says that there is already a blog hosted at the domain.
Once they figure out a way around this problem the custom domain feature should work great.
When I set up my first blog using this feature, it took right away. My other blogs took a couple days before everything started working. During that timeframe no one could access my site including me, but the wait is worth it.
I had my blog set up with a redirect page as you instructed a while ago. i ticked the new Blogger redirect box, and deleted the index, but now all i'm getting is Page not Found screens! :(
I'm hosting with goDaddy- have I done something wrong?
Hello Sean,
I haven't used this method myself as I have many other files required for my blogs hosted on my domain and the Blogger redirect would break their connection. I would assume that so long as you have deleted the index.html redirect file that the redirection from http://yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com should work okay.
This may have been just a temporary problem until the DNS settings have propagated across the whole internet, so check your blog URL today to see if the problem is still there.
The only other forseeable possibility is that GoDaddy adds a "welcome.html" file to your account by default, and you may also need to delete this to ensure the redirect works okay.
If neither of these solutions works, please send me your URL and I will see if I can deduce any other problems for you.
Best wishes,
Amanda
Hi Amanda, just read this, sounds great.
When I first got my custom domain a few months I tried out the redirect page you mentioned, and it worked great. Seeing this now however, i've decided to switch.
I've deleted the .index file and everything else that was on the hosting account, but i'm still only getting the www.domain, rather than the one without that prefix- all I seem to be getting is the GoDaddy Page Not Found screen?
Is this just another case of the DNS settings updating like one of the other commenter's problems, and if so, how long should it take?
Thanks again.
For Richardam:
It's most likely that the DNS settings would need to propagate before the automatic redirection will begin to work effectively. Generally this will take 24-48 hours after the new setting was activated, though some people notice the changes within just a few hours.
I would actually feel better if Blogger would publish some details about how this actually works. The few ways I know this can be achieved would generally require access to your domain/hosting account. So I would love to know how Blogger manage to do this remotely...
I am still having a similar problem after 1 month (I have the google redirect clicked). My site with the "www" -www.financeviewpoint.com - works fine. But if I type in financviewpoint.com, I get a page under construction error. I bought my domain name from yahoo.com, and they said google has to provide me with a static IP....which google hasn't.
CAn you help?
Andy
an
Hi Amanda! Just discovered our incredible blog! Thanks so much for all the sound advice.
I am also having a similar problem to the above commenters. I purchased my domain names from godaddy.com and made the switch from my .blogspot addy to my own domain name.
I did this on Saturday and today is Thursday but yet, users that fail to type in www when seeking my Nigerian Curiosity blog are sent to a 'parked' page created by godaddy.
All attempts to use the Blogger Advanced Settings function - "Redirect nigeriancuriosity.com to www.nigeriancuriosity.com" have come up short.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time.
For Andy and Solomonsydelle: it still seems that Blogger's automatic redirect isn't foolproof unfortunately. Without having any firm information, I can't be sure how this service actually works, and am unable to troubleshoot for you both.
It may be helpful for you to set up your own redirection page is you have any hosting available with your domain name. I wrote a post about this which you can read here.
Hope this may be useful to you!
There is no need of any redirect page...it will affect the page rank of your site..
Defenitely there are many people having trouble using custom domains in blogger.There are usually bugs when trying to redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com in blogger.Errors like one shown below “THERE ARE ERRORS ON THIS FORM” is found while trying to redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com.
Read the update in the bottom section of the below link which gives you full idea...
http://www.trapbot.com/blogging/custom-domain-errors-in-blogger/10/
thanks
Have you done a post about using Blogger's service to buy your domain name through Blogger itself? Because I've been wondering: if I do get a custom domain, will I have to go back and re-do all my submissions to blog directories, Technorati, and all that jazz? Or do I just have to set up the domain through Blogger?
I came to this post and then tried also this feature in Blogger but http:// was not redirected into http://www
Another way is to do it manually.
1. Login to your cPanel. Then in Domain section, click "Redirection"
2. In Redirection page, choose your domain name: Change the option "All Public Domain" into your "domainname.com"
3. Then in "redirects to" form, type with "http://www.domainname.com"
4. For "www redirection" radio button, check "Do Not Redirect www"
5. Check "Wild Card Redirect"
6. Hit "Add" button
It works with mine and you don't need to delete any files in your cPanel.
Don't forget to change domainname with your own domain name!
Dear Amanda,
I have bought 2 domains from blogger itself and none seemed to work. These domains were bought last June 6 and June 27 all from blogger.
The reason I bought from blogger is for the automatic configuration that would save me all the toruble but the opposite happened. I have been having headaches searching for help and trying all possibilities that is known to me but still to no avail.
The domains are supposed to be at www.webloglearner.com and
www.webbiestuffs.com
All I get is 404. Since you are a blogger expert, is there any way i can get a refund? Or make my domains work?
Any help is highly appreciated.
Since my blog is down, I am using the tagboard at
http://abc-tags.blogspot.com at the moemnt.
When I try to click that redirection box, the message I get is that the blog is already hosted by blogspot. What can i do?
Thank you.
Rogue
Hello rogue,
I have to admit that I prefer control of my own domains, and set domains up using the advanced method (rather than via Blogger).
However, I have pinged your custom URLs and as far as I can tell, the DNS has been properly set up (both domains point to ghs.google.com).
Does the message you receive say "Another blog is already hosted at this address"?
If so, you can fill in a "Magical custom domain" form here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pZHHZdeYKeHitQbvxkvwnCg&email=true
This asks the Blogger team to reset your domain settings, and your domain should then be accessible within about 48 hours.
If this isn't the case, ensure that you type www.webloglearner.com and www.webbiestuffs.com (with the www prefix!) when you try to link your blog to your domain. If you type without the www prefix, this may be the cause of the error messages.
Is this still doesn't work, do you have access to the control panel for your domain name (ie: can you log into GoDaddy or your domain provider as an account holder)?
If so, you may need to reset a few things and reconfigure the DNS manually.
Let me know how you get on with this information. I'd love to help personally but I am manically busy these days! If need be, I'll play around with a test domain at the weekend (when I have more free time) to try and replicate such errors, and will write up a full tutorial soon.
Best wishes,
Amanda
We've posted a guide that allows you to forward from Blogger to Wordpress if you are so inclined. It details forwarding individual posts, the main blog, no indexing your blog, etc. It's pretty sweet and up to date.
Successfully Forwarding Blogger to Wordpress
Dear Amanda --
I'm a little confused. (OK, a lot.)
You mention that there's "no more fiddling with the CNAME and A records in your domain's DNS settings as Blogger will now do the hard work for you!" but when I follow the instructions on Blogger to facilitate the redirect it mentions that my domain "must be properly registered first," which includes fiddling with the CNAME etc.
Am I misunderstanding something?
Nice post, thaaanks
Heya!
I have some problems with redirect too! I have a custom domain and
when i go to www.mydomain.com i`m redirected on mydomain.blogspot.com
but when i go from *blogspot.com domain do www.mydomain.com the page
cannot be displayed.. so i lose all readers :( ..help me please. thank
you! bye!
Hi amanda,
this post is pretty old but i think you shall still reply to my query.
I have bought my domain name from godaddy and have setup everything properly. I have also used (checked the box) this feature of redirecting in my blogger settings.
Now the problem is that when i just use this address http://bloggeruser.com the page is not redirected , it rather opens godaddy page.
Can you please help me how to solve this issue ?
Thank you.
Hi, amanda i f we host our won domain, are we still under blogger's TOS? my blog flagged as a spam blog, I'm kinda upset on blogger right now.
Your website is really cool and this is a great inspiring article. Thank you so much.
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