Posted by ljmacphee on April 28, 2008 under blogger, blogging, how to | 
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.
[ click on image for larger view ]
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
[ click on image for larger view ]
4) Go to Forwarding
- Forward Enabled
- Forward To: http://www.yourdomain.com
- Redirect type 301 Moved Permanently
[ click on image for larger view ]
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. ]
Posted by ljmacphee on March 14, 2008 under blogger |
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.
Posted by ljmacphee on November 5, 2007 under blogger, how to, security |
Once upon a time when TimesToCome was very young I had a section filled with background images. The expectation was that people would download the images and use them on their own sites. What happened was many people hotlinked to them. Hot linking is when you put a link to someone’s image on their server rather than host it on your server.
My first solution was to remove the images and replace them all with pastel colored smiley faces. While this worked it also meant I couldn’t put up background images for users to download.
There is a better way to do this. You can use .htaccess to prevent hotlinking of images, yet still make them available for your users to view and download. You can prevent all hotlinking of images on your site or just block specific images from being hotlinked.
Block ALL image hotlinking by adding this to your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain\.com(/?.*$)
[NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC,L]
This sends a 403 forbidden error to the person doing the hotlinking and stops processing the .htaccess file.
To allow a domain ( Yours and any others you have ) to hotlink your files add this to the above code: RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}
!^http://(www\.)?okdomain\.com(/)?.*$[NC]
Just add one line for each domain you wish to allow to hotlink.
To block hotlinking in specific directories create an .htaccess file and put it in that directory Then add these lines:
Rewrite Engine on
RewriteRule ^.*$ -
You can also replace the image so the hotlinker sees a different image than the one on your site: RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain\.com(/?.*$)
[NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ /images/warningimage.gif [L,NC]
Now .htaccess is just that, nothing should be added to the file name. If you make a mistake you’ll likely take down your site. So try on your home computer first. If you do take down your site, just delete .htaccess or move it to old.htaccess until you can fix the problem.
You can also block specific sites like MySpace from hotlinking but allow all others ( like Google image search etc )
Block by server name:
RewriteEngine on
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} evilwebsite\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherevilwebsite\.com
RewriteRule .*-[F]
To block an ip just add it to your blocked list: ( this blocks both 1.2.3.4 and 0.0.0.0 )
order allow,deny
deny from 1.2.3.4
deny from 0.0.0.0
allow from all
Posted by ljmacphee on September 19, 2007 under blogger, wordpress |
I’m moving my blogs from Blogger to Wordpress hosted at GoDaddy. The first move took a week during which the whole site was down. The second took a day. Now I can do it with almost no down time.
First back up your Blogger blog to a Wordpress blog. The new Wordpress has an ‘Import’ button and you can import from Blogger to Wordpress. If you have not got your Wordpress set up yet, or if it just doesn’t work, DON’T PANIC. Go to Wordpress.com set up a free blog and do your import. It does work there. Some times it times out, just be patient and reload the page when it times out. Then export it to your home computer.
OK now we have a back up of our Blogger blog. Make several copies and stash them in several safe places.
If you have Wordpress set up on your home computer, you can import your backup you just made, tweak your theme and fix your links before moving. This is a much easier, less stressful way to make the move and I highly recommend it.
Images: if you have them stored on Blogger fetch copies of them and stick them in an images folder. You need to upload this folder to your new server and change your links to the images on your server in each and every post you have an image. Or you can just leave the images hosted with Google and the links in each post will be fine.
Files: if you have other files of yours you link to from your blog, fetch copies, stuff them in a files folder and change the links in your posts.
Domain name: if you have your own domain name you need to point it to your new webhost. If you were pointing your domain name to Blogger then you MUST delete the cname record you put in there or it will continue to point to your Blogger blog.
Install Wordpress in the root directory of your new server.
Upload and activate your template.
Import your backup file.
Check and fix all your links. Then check them again. ( You will have to re-do all your YouTube Video embedded links, just cut and paste them from your Blogger posts. )
Fix your permalinks:
Select Custom, specify below
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
That will break as few links to posts as possible. The rest you’ll want to add 301 redirects to in your .htaccess file.
Your permalink will not work right away. DON’T PANIC. Go have coffee. It will take about an hour for the permalink structure to begin working.
Your draft posts will have been imported. You must go to each draft post - put a check in the ‘Edit timestamp’ box and click [Publish]. Then when the correct date and time arrives Wordpress will automatically post your post.
Don’t forget to :
Update your ad code into your new templates
Update your StatCounter and Google Analytics code into your new template
Update your verification at Google Tools for Webmasters
Back up your new blog
Back up your new blog again
Delete all the posts from your Blogger Blog and put up a ‘we’ve moved!’ post with a link to the new blog.
It took me a week to remember it, but I had made an archive link list for the Blogger blogs. It was very handy for finding broken links so I could create 301 redirects for them. Create an archive of all your posts before the move. There’s a PERL script on the sidebar to do this. Then you can verify your post links translated properly. I found 25%-33% didn’t.
Consider starting out with the K2 theme. It is extremely user friendly and will make transitioning from Blogger easier if you are not comfortable with CSS and template hacking.
see also:
How to do 301 redirects
How to redirect Blogger to Wordpress
