Setting Up A Custom Domain Starts With A BlogSpot Blog

If you wanted a blog published to an external server, using FTP, one of the problems with that procedure was the status of the current BlogSpot URL. As soon as you published your blog to the external server, your old URL on BlogSpot became instantly available. This gave you the same problems as if you had changed your blog URL within BlogSpot.

Occasionally, folks having tired of the problems with publishing by FTP would try to switch back to BlogSpot, and run problems caused by lack of planning when they originally switched to FTP publishing. When Blogger designed Custom Domains, they started by resolving those problems.

When you setup a custom domain, you publish your blog to the custom domain URL. Instead of simply switching your blog to the custom domain URL, the BlogSpot URL currently in use is redirected to the new custom domain URL. The BlogSpot URL remains active, and your reader, when requesting the BlogSpot URL gets the blog at the custom domain. This is automatically done for you, when you publish to the custom domain.

We won't leave your readers behind! http://xxxxxxx.blogspot.com will redirect to your custom domain.

But this solution presents us with a new concern. Before you publish to a Custom Domain, you have to publish to BlogSpot. This is true whether you are setting up a new blog, or whether your blog was previously published to an external server using FTP.

You have to have a BlogSpot URL, to forward to the custom domain. That's how you start, now.

1. Get the blog working as a normal BlogSpot blog.
2. Now, you have a choice.
   • Setup the domain yourself.
     • Get the DNS for the custom domain working.
     • Publish to the custom domain using "Advanced Settings".
   • Setup the domain using "Buy A Domain".

It's as easy as 1-2-3, but you do have to do all 3 steps, in the right order.

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