The Real Blogger Status

Some of my favourite problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , are about inconsistent blog online status. It was fine yesterday. Why is it down, now? and I see the blog, just fine! Why are some of my readers complaining? and I can access it, using my phone! Why is Blogger down, on my home computer? and The registrar tells me everything is OK! Whenever I see the latter report, I know exactly where to start.

I'm sure that you know bloggers like my Mom. Mom can blog, but she requires a lot of coaching. Between the technical skill levels which my mom has, and that of you (or me), come a lot of people. Some bloggers will create beautiful blogs (way better than this one), but publish them to BlogSpot only. Other bloggers will want more, and some will setup a Google custom domain .

During the past week, we had an interesting experience where customers of Register.Com were reporting broken custom domains - domains that were using DNS service provided by Register. We traced the problem to a bogus address record , on a Register DNS server. ghs.google.com. 14400 IN CNAME ghs.google.com . Some time yesterday, the problem was, supposedly, fixed. Not. This morning, in reviewing the many threads in BHG: Something Is Broken, I see a reply in one thread I called Register.com again and walked through changing the DNS server settings one more time, and things are now working again. In the process of closing that problem, I did a final Dig on the domain, and found an interesting detail. ; > DiG 9.3.2 > @dns090.a.register.com www.theresmytwocents.com ANY ; (1 server found) ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.theresmytwocents.com. IN ANY ...

Most people, when setting up a new custom domain, simply use the " Buy A Domain " wizard, and end up with eNom or GoDaddy as a registrar. Neither eNom nor GoDaddy are foolproof, and some folks find new and exciting ways to make their domains not work. Neither the Custom Domain Reset Form, nor the Blogger Help Group, will be retired within this lifetime. For all their flaws, both eNom and GoDaddy are predictable, within limits. Some folks like to "roll their own", and use third party registrars, and " Advanced Settings ". Now, we have challenges. This evening, we have BHG: Something Is Broken: Custom domain suddenly not working We've had a custom domain set up perfectly for 2 years. Somehow this morning, with no changes to our DNS nor blogspot .. our blog is fubar. As usual, I start examining Dig logs (here, unabridged) for the domain. And, I find oddities. ; > DiG 9.3.2 > crackedsidewalks.com A ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer...