The Real Blogger Status

If you are trying to make your custom domain published blog work, see my guide Troubleshooting Your Custom Domain Problems . If you want to know how to setup a custom domain properly, from the beginning - and avoid the need for Troubleshooting - read Setting Up DNS Addresses For Custom Domains . Avoid the most basic mistakes made - read The Simplicity Of A Custom Domain Setup . If you just setup your custom domain - and want to minimise the effects of the URL change upon your search engine relationships - read Managing The Migration . If you're just browsing, then read on - but get a good cup of coffee first. And welcome, to Nitecruzr Dot Net.

Of the many accessories and features in Blogger, Custom Domain Publishing is possibly the most problematic. Looking at the Labels index in this blog, I see the Custom Domains label on 363 posts (as of 2015/06/15) - which makes it one of the most heavily labeled single topics here. There are several challenges with diagnosing and resolving a custom domain problem. It has various different causes . It leads to many different symptoms, which can easily be confused for other problems . Its symptoms can be chronic or intermittent- and may be immediate, or may take months to exhibit themselves. It may require resolution by any blog guest, by the blog owner, by Blogger Support, and / or by a third party such as the domain registrar.

One of the simplest - and most user friendly - displays that you can add, to your blog, is a custom "404 Not Found" display. A standard Blogger blog, by default, provides a terse advice, for invalid URLs. Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist. Would it not be more user friendly, to use relevant slang, maybe. Sorry, bro - that's not on! You can do this - and more - with a little imagination.

Some Blogger blog owners, trying to save a few dollars while publishing their blogs to a non BlogSpot URL, have used the free service "co.cc" for registering their domains. As "co.cc" increased its base of "customers", their reputation for providing free registration grew - and they became popular with scammers and spammers. Last year, Google, weary of the overall poor search engine reputation of co.cc customers, de indexed all websites registered by co.cc . This week, co.cc apparently stopped serving DNS information for its "customer domains".

This week, many unhappy blog owners report inability to login to Blogger, and access their dashboards. In some cases, they are seeing the well known "404 Not Found" error. For a few folks, this error comes from an odd habit - which used to be supported by Blogger - but no more.

One mysterious monolithic error message, reported by Blogger blog owners for some time, is the mysterious "Conflicting Edits" error. There was more than one attempt to edit this resource at the same time. This may have been because you double clicked on a link or a button or because someone else is also editing this blog or post. Please hit the back button on your browser and try again. If the problem persists, please contact the Blogger Help Group. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Similar to a redirection to the Google Apps Start Page service , some custom domains will be found to be directed to Google Sites. Again, we'll see an apparently normal (asymmetrical) DNS address configuration . mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.32.21 mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.34.21 mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.36.21 mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.38.21 www.mydomain.net. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. --- ghs.google.com. 282206 IN CNAME ghs.l.google.com. ghs.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.43.121 The diagnosis, again, will be made using an (abbreviated) HTTP trace . Sending request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: mydomain.net User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv: 1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5 Connection: close • Finding host IP address... • Host IP address = 209.85.171.121 • Finding TCP protoc...

Occasionally, the ubiquity of the custom domain curse Server Not Found Error 404 surprises even me. In this case, as in many others, the domain is properly setup. mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.32.21 mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.34.21 mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.36.21 mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 216.239.38.21 www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. --- ghs.google.com. 282206 IN CNAME ghs.l.google.com. ghs.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.43.121 An an (abbreviated) HTTP trace gives intriguing details. Sending request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.mydomain.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv: 1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6 Connection: close • Finding host IP address... • Host IP address = 209.85.171.121 • Finding TCP protocol... • Binding to local socket... • Connecting to host... • Sending r...

Sometimes, even with a properly setup custom domain , you (or your readers) may encounter a well known problem Server Not Found Error 404 I wrote about this earlier, about a symptom that has no obvious cause . Sometimes, the well known "Server Not Found Error 404" symptom has a cause, but you may have to look carefully to find it. Many times, you find no clue in the DNS addresses. This is a normal (asymmetrical) DNS address configuration . mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.32.21 mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.34.21 mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.36.21 mydomain.net. 3600 IN A 216.239.38.21 www.mydomain.net. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. --- ghs.google.com. 282206 IN CNAME ghs.l.google.com. ghs.l.google.com. 300 IN A 74.125.43.121 Here, an (abbreviated) HTTP trace will give you a clue. Sending request: GET / HTTP/...

Sometimes, even with a properly setup custom domain , you (or your readers) may encounter a well known problem Server Not Found Error 404

Some time ago, I wrote about blogs, newly setup for custom domain publishing, undergoing a transition period , where both the Blog*Spot and Custom Domain URLs are active, but seemingly 2 separate web sites. This appears to be a (almost exactly) 72 hours while Google allows time for DNS propogation of the new URL to take effect, worldwide. Now, it appears that some blogs, having gone through the transition period, are still not active. Here's one case, " keith-in-training.com ". keith-in-training.com. 3600 IN A 64.233.179.121 keith-in-training.com. 3600 IN A 66.249.81.121 keith-in-training.com. 3600 IN A 72.14.207.121 www.keith-in-training.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. Appears to be a normal, asymmetrical DNS setup made using either " Buy A Domain " or maybe Google Apps . 5/31/2008 19:52:36 Trying http://keith-in-training.blogspot.com Redirect! Header: HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently Location: http://www.keith-in-training.com/ Content-Type: text/html; char...

A couple of weeks ago, I published Custom Domain Publishing, And The 404 Error - Chronic Edition . Since that time, I was able to contact Blogger Support more directly than through this blog, and I was able to pass on to them a few egregious cases which included the symptoms described in that post. Several of those cases, they were able to ultimately fix. Many people were happy. Kudos, Blogger. Until today that is; when 2 people, who were earlier using their blogs quite happily, reported to me, within the span of 1 hour, that their blogs were, now, displaying Server Not Found Error 404 Note, please, that the error, previously reported, was not identical. Not Found Error 404 Not Again!! What does this mean? Only Blogger Support can say for sure. If your custom domain published blog is now showing this new symptom, please let us know. Comments will be posted below. Problem Log Date Domain Remarks 5/14 deliverancegothic.com - mycup2yours.com 5/15 fragrancediva.net greateststoryt...

For some time now, blogs published to a custom domain , and previously working, have been (apparently) randomly yielding a new monolithic error when being read. Not Found Error 404 Recently, owners of blogs supposedly not associated with custom domains have complained of this oddity also. Why not at least The blog you were looking for was not found . or maybe even Blog not found Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist. However, the name xxxxxxx is available to register! If your BlogSpot blog, not now and never previously part of a custom domain, is showing this symptom, please comment here with the blog name. If you're suffering from this idiosyncrasy, silence won't get the problem fixed. >> (Update 5/28) : Blogger Support has suggested a possible (distant) connection between template corruption and observation of this symptom. >> Forum thread links: bX-*00080 >> Copy this tag: bX-*00080 >> Top

On the surface, the old "404 Not Found" would be one problem - simply your computer saying "Hey! I can't access the other computer!". Those of us who work in computer and network troubleshooting know that there are dozens of possible causes for that one symptom. We know, for a certainty, that if we persist in believing that there is one problem causing all of the "404 Not Found" errors, that one problem will never be solved. This symptom will be solved only with detail and determination, and lots of diagnostic work . >> (Update: 5/18) : Blogger Support is now suspecting a link between use of Google Apps, and the 404. If you are having this problem, please help us diagnose the problem. Describe your use of the following Blogger / Google applications / wizards, with any possible details (relevant dates would be useful), in setting up or maintaining your domain: Blogger " Advanced Settings " wizard. Blogger " Buy A Domain For Yo...

The problem of blogs, published to a custom domain, suddenly returning a "404 Not Found" when access is attempted, has been chronic since November 2007. Almost daily, we'd see reports of 2 or 3 such problems. This evening, we saw 4 reports in a space of 1/2 hour. And we continue to see more. The good news is, so far the reported cases all respond favourably to having the blog published back to BlogSpot, then republished to the "www" alias , using "Advanced Settings". In some cases, the victims have reported success after repeating the republishing cycle. >> (Update: 5/18) : Blogger Support is now suspecting a link between use of Google Apps, and the 404. If you are having this problem, please help us diagnose the problem. Describe your use of the following Blogger / Google applications / wizards, with any possible details (relevant dates would be useful), in setting up or maintaining your domain: Blogger " Advanced Settings " wizar...

I almost hesitate to start this post, because of the date. However, I promise you, this is no joke. Recently (and before today, so I don't see this as a joke), Blogger made a change to their servers, and to how they display "404 Address Not Found". And, I've seen some confusion resulting from the change. Here, for instance, is a link to this blog . And here is a link to this post . Simple enough? How about a link to a non existent web site . See the display? Server not found Firefox can't find the server at nitecruzr-non-existent-blog. Duh. What's a server? OK, "Chuck's Non Existent Blog" doesn't exist. Or, it exists in my mind, purely to make this point. Don't think about this too hard though. How about a just deleted blog ? Blog has been removed Sorry, the blog at nitecruzr-non-existent-blog.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs. This blog did exist - for a few minutes. It doesn't exis...

When you work with a custom domain, and endure / work around the frustration of DNS setup , and later the monolithic error "Another blog ..." , you occasionally may see another error. After you finally manage to redirect your blog "myblog.blogspot.com" to "www.mycustomdomain.com", and possibly after you add Google Apps to your custom domain, you or your readers will try to load the blog, and see Not Found Error 404 or its equivalent in another browser Live Search Were you looking for: My Custom Domain? When that happens, there's just one way to recover, and that involves repeating the previous setup. If you haven't done so already, and if you're able to do so, check and correct your DNS setup . If you just removed or edited a DNS entry, examine the TTL value of the entry that you removed or edited. To improve your chances of getting through this without seeing "Another blog ...", do nothing during the TTL period, while you wait, to ...

This is a very popular error message, being seen recently. And by popular, I don't mean well liked, as in Chuck is a popular guy. I wish. I mean we are seeing it a lot, recently. Or it's being reported a lot. Or maybe, it's always around, but the other problems are down a lot, so this one is visible. The problem here is, it's used so much we don't know what it means. It could be anything like Your computer won't connect to it. We don't know where it is We know where it is, but we won't let you connect. In Microsoft Windows Networking, it might be a combination of the old Error 5 aka Access Denied and the Error 53 aka Name Not Found . Both of these are very popular (and again not well liked) errors in Windows. So how do we fix it? That's the bottom line. You start by identifying who's responsible for it. The message itself is coming from your computer. Start with a little basic troubleshooting . If the problem is just you connecting to ...