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Schizophrenia And Custom Domain URLs - December 2008

Last month, I reported an oddity in custom domain publishing - the observation that, for some domains, the selection
Redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com.
was apparently treated as selected, even if not so, by some custom domain scripts.

A number of bloggers reported seeing "Server Not Found Error 404" for custom domains that had been operational for some time, and subsequently revealed that they were only publishing to "www.mydomain.com", with no DNS address definition for "mydomain.com".

In the latter cases, my advice would be
  1. Add a DNS address definition for "mydomain.com" (or "www.mydomain.com", as necessary).
  2. Wait for the appropriate TTL latency period to expire.
  3. Publish the blog back to BlogSpot, then forward to "www.mydomain.com" again.

This month, we are seeing a new, and similar, oddity. Following republishing (the third step, above), some bloggers report seeing
Another blog is already hosted at this address.
when trying to select
Redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com.
even when both the domain root and the "www" alias are defined in DNS. Still odder, an HTTP trace, and subsequent loading of the blog in the browser, show no problem.

Sending request:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: mydomain.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:
1.8.1.18) Gecko/20081029 Firefox/2.0.0.18
Connection: close

• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 209.85.171.121
• Finding TCP protocol...
• Binding to local socket...
• Connecting to host...
• Sending request...
• Waiting for response...
Receiving Header:
HTTP/1.1·302·Moved·Temporarily(CR)(LF)
Location:·http://www.mydomain.com/(CR)(LF)

Sending request:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydomain.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:
1.8.1.18) Gecko/20081029 Firefox/2.0.0.18
Connection: close

• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 209.85.171.121
• Finding TCP protocol...
• Binding to local socket...
• Connecting to host...
• Sending request...
• Waiting for response...
Receiving Header:
HTTP/1.1·200·OK(CR)(LF)

<link·rel="alternate"·type="application/atom
+xml"·title="My·Blog·-·Atom"·
href="http://www.mydomain.com/feeds/posts/default"·/>(LF)
<link·rel="alternate"·type="application/rss
+xml"·title="My·Blog·-·RSS"·
href="http://www.mydomain.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss"·/>(LF)

The domain is operational. Subsequent query of the blogger reporting the problem
It is redirecting. ... Did you check the "Redirect" option, or is it un checked?
would be replied
Hmm, so it is. It is unchecked.

Here, we see a working domain, with the redirect selection unchecked (and uncheckable), but both the domain root, and the "www" alias, operational. All details are verified by the blogger in question.

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Comments

Chen said…
This is boring...
Blogger should fix these odd problems asap...
Nitecruzr said…
Well, yes they should. Except, they can't. In all fairness to Google, they do not control the Internet DNS infrastructure, nor do they control the many ways that bloggers can hose their own domain DNS configurations. And, in trying to compensate for the latter two issues, they make changes to their code, and they are human and make mistakes.

Now, if they would just admit their mistakes, and reliably support their corrective efforts, we could get on with our lives. But they don't do either, hence the need for this blog.

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