The Real Blogger Status

The Blogger "Google Custom Domain" product, which gives bloggers a much requested ability to use a non-BlogSpot URL with a Layouts template, was first offered over a year ago, in January, 2007 . I've been writing about Custom Domains ever since - the basic procedure of setting one up, and about the problems involved , and even about the many improvements that it's received .

Now that Google Custom Domains are becoming more polished, and people can see their usefulness, many bloggers who are less technically savvy are wanting one. Having more web presence than the plain old "myblog.blogspot.com" is probably the dream of many. To encourage this, Blogger recently added the " Buy A Domain For Your Blog " wizard. Like all Blogger wizards, it has its advantages and its disadvantages.

Since the Google Custom Domain product was made available to eager bloggers, there has been a well known limitation - the inability to get both "www.mydomain.com" and "mydomain.com" to redirect to the same Blog*Spot blog. I've been writing about this limitation since March 2007, a couple months after Custom Domains was launched. That limitation was resolved in October, 2007 . But the ability to make "mydomain.com" == "www.mydomain.com" brought more uncertainty. Not all DNS Hosts support "CNAME" referral, of both the primary domain ("mydomain.com") and a subdomain ("www.mydomain.com"). Yet that referral is essential to the success of custom domain use. When you setup your domain, the domain setup wizard (provided by your DNS host) should provide you with two lists - "A" and "CNAME". All direct references ("Hosts") go into the "A" list, and all others ("Aliases...

One of the most well known, and resented, shortcomings of the Google Custom Domain product has always been the inability to have your blog respond to both "www.yourdomain.com" and "yourdomain.com", simultaneously. Bloggers have been requesting, and waiting for, this shortcoming to be corrected constantly, since January 2007, when Custom Domains was released. Today, I idly went to check the Settings for one of my blogs, that's published to a Custom Domain. What did I happen to spot? Surprise!!! Now to find a way to test it, and hopefully make it work??!! Obviously, we need to start with both "martinezumc.org" and "www.martinezumc.org" hosted by Google. C:\>ping www.martinezumc.org Pinging ghs.l.google.com [64.233.179.121] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=247 Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=247 Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=247 Reply from 64.233.179.121: bytes=32 ...