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Custom Domains - An Improvement?

One of the most well known, and resented, shortcomings of the Google Custom Domain product has always been the inability to have your blog respond to both "www.yourdomain.com" and "yourdomain.com", simultaneously.

Bloggers have been requesting, and waiting for, this shortcoming to be corrected constantly, since January 2007, when Custom Domains was released.

Today, I idly went to check the Settings for one of my blogs, that's published to a Custom Domain. What did I happen to spot?



Surprise!!!


Now to find a way to test it, and hopefully make it work??!!

Obviously, we need to start with both "martinezumc.org" and "www.martinezumc.org" hosted by Google.


C:\>ping www.martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=247

Ping statistics for 64.233.179.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 72ms, Maximum = 75ms, Average = 73ms

C:\>ping martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=76ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=247

Ping statistics for 64.233.179.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 70ms, Maximum = 76ms, Average = 73ms


So now, the rubber must meet the road.



Dang!


And as normal, what looks like yet another flat tire. But think again. That's just the old monolithic error, which has a tested workaround.



Half an hour of perplexed meandering through Google Apps, and ...



Success!


One small step forward.

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Comments

amr said…
that is fantastic (even though it didn't work). it at least means it's very high on the priority list. just might be time for me to come up with a domain name for my church and start redirecting our site...

btw, thanks for being so diligent about updating this blog. i simply don't have the time i once did to frequent the help forum, and my own blogs work fine ("if it ain't broke..."), but it's good to at least be informed of developments.
Nitecruzr said…
It's a start, isn't it? Now my weekend project is to get my domain to work. It would be so kewl to announce on Sunday that "www.martinezumc.org" now works as well as "martinezumc.org".

Yeah right Chuck. As if any of the church members would notice.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. It's definitely a boost to have you commenting, if ever so briefly. The forums (you know which ones, too) are a bit poorer without you. Your membership is still there.
Robin said…
Dear Chuck, i tried to publish to a custom domain rockstarpundit.com instead of www because i have a day of 'Another blog is already hosted at this address' error while i try www. So it was a successfully saved until i try to VIEW BLOG which lead me to a 404 blogger page which make me more confused because i thought i was very near, you know what i'm saying. Then i try to Redirect www to the domain then i found another saving error. I remember that i forward the domain to http://www. at GoDaddy, so i disable the forwarding but then it still didn't work.

I try to re-read through all your posts as regard to this matter which often mention to disable Google Apps which i don't understand. I use free Google Apps to host my email, is this the same Google Apps we're talking about? How to disable that Goggle Apps? Should i disable my email? I did this once to my other domain and i never ever successfully re-added the domain to GA.

So i'm confused. I think the new redirect custom domain feature will mislead many bloggers. Earlier today i thought i was the only one.

Please help me. Seems like noone working at Blogger except robots.
Nitecruzr said…
Robin,

I'm working on a more complete article, with lots of pictures, on how to use Google Apps to reset the problem. I think you'll be easier to help, if you'll post in Google Blogger Help, where we can converse easier.
Unknown said…
I find your post. I have this kind of problem I try to transfer my blog ufficiarredati.blogspot.com to www.ufficiarredati.info but an other blog is hosting on my domain. Please can you help me?Gianluca
Nitecruzr said…
Gianluca,

Please recycle the domain settings, using Google Apps.

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