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Before Publishing Back To BlogSpot, Get The DNS Addresses Right

One problem, occasionally seen in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, involves blog owners preparing to re use their custom domain for publishing their website - and who now need to publish their Blogger blog back to BlogSpot.
I need to reuse my domain for my website - but when I try to re publish my blog, I keep seeing
Another blog is already hosted at this address.
How can I get my blog back online?

When we look at the domain, and the DNS addresses, we see the domain pointing to the website, already. And this is where many custom domain publishing problems start.

Any time you make any change to a blog, that involves custom domain publishing, the changes will go much more smoothly with the domain properly pointing to the blog.

Whether you are setting up a new custom domain publishing, changing a custom domain publishing, or maybe removing a custom domain publishing, the publishing process works much better with the domain properly redirected to the Google database.

One of the causes of the mysterious message
Another blog is already hosted at this address
comes from the domain not being properly redirected to the Google servers. When the Blogger re publishing process can't continue because the domain DNS addresses are not correct, the process terminates with an error. Whenever any database change terminates with an error, it's always possible that the process may not clean up after itself before ending - and artifacts (aka broken pointers) will be left behind in the database.

The next time that you try to re publish the blog - or when you (or your readers) try to view the blog - you (or they) will see, yet again
Another blog is already hosted at this address.
or an alternate
Server Not Found Error 404
When that happens, you have only one choice - recycle the domain settings - and pray to the deity of your choice.

The latter processes are not known to be 100% effective. The best way to deal with them is to never deal with them - to not start by causing a problem. That means to always keep the domain DNS addresses righteous, whenever maintaining a custom domain published blog.

If you are going to use your domain for a non Blogger website, always publish your Blogger blog back to BlogSpot, first. Then, verify the status of the blog. Finally, and with no problems discovered, change the DNS addresses.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hello and thank you for accepting comments. I am thinking of converting back to my old blogspot address (timsmarketblog.blogspot.com) from my custom domain (shawinvestments.org). Is it as simple as just X ing out the custom domain in the settings area, then the redirect becomes the url again, with page views still active?

















Anonymous said…
to change back to original blogspot url, is it as easy as just X-ing out the custom domain, and all else stays intact like pageviews?
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Tim,

Thanks for the question, it's a good one.

It is procedurally easy to Click On The "X" - and doing so will retain Stats history, as Stats retrieves pageviews for the blog, not the URL.

You do however need to be careful of search reputation - as search rep is by URL, not by blog. And unlike publishing to a custom domain, which includes automatic redirection from BlogSpot URL to domain URL, when you click on the "X", there is no redirection from the domain URL to the BlogSpot URL.

Plan the change.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/10/custom-domain-publishing-moving-back-to.html

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2010/01/custom-domain-migration-managing.html

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2013/09/click-on-x-if-you-can-find-it-and-if.html
I'm having that issue right now. Is there a service that will do this for you? I am NOT a technical person and have no idea what I'm doing. Thank you very much!

Lori

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