Herself's Webtools

I was asked to help set up a website for a local non-profit. Last time I set up a custom domain name for Blogspot with GoDaddy it was totally painless. It sure wasn’t this time. 404 errors, name servers that wouldn’t update and Google’s directions on Blogger just don’t work.

Here is what does work.

1) Log onto Google
– go to your blog
– go to settings then publishing
Your domain = http://www.yourdomain.com
Be sure to put in the www
Do not check the box for the redirect.
Save settings.

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2) Log onto your GoDaddy Account
– go to Domains then My Domains
– check that the name servers are ‘Default Parked Nameservers

3) Go to Total DNS Control and MX Records
– under cnames set host www to points to ghs.google.com

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4) Go to Forwarding
– Forward Enabled
– Forward To: http://www.yourdomain.com
– Redirect type 301 Moved Permanently

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That’s it. If everything is correct all should be well in a couple of hours. Possibly as long as two days but I’ve never had it take more than a couple of hours. Just replace herselfsgreenthings.com with your domain name in each of the three pictures.

[ I just set that up temporarily to solve this problem. That domain will probably be reverted to its proper home by the time you read this. ]

One of the main reasons I parted paths with Blogger was there was no easy way to backup and restore my blogs there.  I did write a Perl script for backing up, but moved to WP before I wrote the restore tool.

BlogBackupOnline is a free tool for most users. It will backup, export to other formats and restore your blog if you should need to do so. You sign up and it will back up your blogs daily. You can restore or export your blog as needed. It does not back up your blog images ( photos, images, video ) yet. They hope to add that in the future.

Storage limits are 50 Mb per account, but since you are only backing up text that should be more than sufficient.