The Real Blogger Status

Not all registrars are able to support the new Blogger domain ownership verification requirement. Some registrars won't allow a second "CNAME" in the same subdomain - and others can't handle the excessively long target address. Ever since Blogger added domain ownership verification, we've been seeing complaints from some blog owners, who have purchased domains directly from registrars who can't provide the required DNS addresses on their servers. Even though not all registrars have DNS servers that will provide the right DNS address entries, most registrars will allow us to use third party DNS servers. The use of publicly available DNS servers, which can provide the required DNS addresses, will eliminate the need to transfer domain registration - when the registrar is unable to provide the right DNS addresses , using their own servers.

Since Blogger restored Custom Domain Publishing last month, with the new domain ownership verification requirement , there have been a few complaints from customers of some registrars who just can't provide the required DNS address record for ownership verification. My registrar says that I can't have two "CNAME" records in the same subdomain. and My registrar's domain manager wizard displays an error saying "Address too long.", when I try to add the "CNAME". Blog owners contacting the registrar, and asking for help, are generally told That's Blogger's problem! (Update 2012/11): Blogger Engineering has provided a workaround for this problem, with any uncooperative registrar, such as 1And1 - use of a (free) third party DNS host .

With the recently restored custom domain publishing feature, and the new domain ownership verification requirement, comes various queries from blog owners unable to verify domain ownership , and to publish their blog to their custom domain. Can I use a "TXT" file, instead of a "CNAME"? My registrar suggests this as an alternative. and Why do I need this? My domain was working, just fine, before I had to re publish the blog! Not all blog owners understand the historical need for verifying domain ownership .

For over 2 months, we've been seeing reports from blog owners who published their blogs to custom domains, with domain DNS hosted by eNom , in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I bought my domain name through Blogger,last week. It is being hosted by eNom. Ever since I bought it some of my followers, and sometimes myself, can't access my site. There is either a DNS search or a "Ooops, Google Chrome can't find..." I tried contacting eNom, and they said they can see my site and that all of my settings are correct. They say it must be Google's problem. The keyword here is "sometimes". Ever since I bought it some of my followers, and sometimes myself, can't access my site.

Not all blog owners, who publish blogs outside the BlogSpot address space, have any feeling for the complexity of the DNS infrastructure . We see the questions periodically in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . My readers are still reporting seeing the well known problem 404 Server not found or I added the "CNAME" for my domain, and I'm still seeing another old friend (not) Another blog is already hosted at this address. when I try to publish the blog to the domain. or I added "blog.mydomain.com" to my domain, and published to it with no problem, but some readers are seeing 404 Server not found Why some - but not all?

When you setup a Google Custom Domain, so you can publish your Blogger blog to a non-Blog*Spot URL, Google continues to host the blog content. Your readers, and you, access the blog content using the URL of the blog , and require use of the DNS system to do that. However, Google doesn't host the DNS , and DNS hosting is an essential part of the custom domain setup process. Lack of proper DNS setup, for your custom domain, may cause any of several results - none of them good.