Custom Domains, and a Typical "404 Not Found"

Sometimes, even with a properly setup custom domain, you (or your readers) may encounter a well known problem

Server Not Found

Error 404

Let's look at an excerpted HTTP trace of a typical blog showing the 404. You may want to compare this with a trace from a successful retrieval.

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 = 216.239.32.21
• 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/1.1·404·Not·Found(CR)(LF)

Here's the relevant part:

HTTP/1.1·302·Moved·Temporarily(CR)(LF)
Location:·http://www.mydomain.com(CR)(LF)

There's the "Redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com." option, executed just fine.

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.mydomain.com

• Finding host IP address...
• Host IP address = 209.85.171.121

and finally

Receiving Header:
HTTP/1.1·404·Not·Found(CR)(LF)

In 9 cases out of 10, this is fairly simple to resolve.

Ensure that the DNS addresses are properly configured.
Publish the blog back to the Blog*Spot URL, then re publish it to the custom domain.
If any errors are seen, recycle the domain settings in Google Apps.

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Leave Comments Here

Like any blogger, I appreciate polite comments, when they are relevant to the blog, and posted to the relevant article in the right blog . If you want to ask me a question thats relevant to blogging, but you can't find the right post to start with (I haven't written about everything blogger related, yet, nor the way things are going I don't expect to either), ask your questions here, or leave an entry in my guestbook . As noted above, please note my commenting policy . If you post a comment to this post , I will probably treat it as a "Contact Me" post . If you have an issue that's relevant to any technical issue in the blog, please leave a comment on the specific post , not here. This post is for general comments, and for non posted contact to me. If the form below does not work for you, check your third party cookies setting! For actual technical issues, note that peer support in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , or Nitecruzr Dot Net - Bloggin...

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