The Real Blogger Status

Some blog owners are confused about how domain ownership verification works - or should work. The domain ownership verification process involves two challenges. Both accessing the registrars zone editor, and parsing the displayed content, is a challenge - for anybody but the domain owner. Or sometimes, including the domain owner. Blogger uses an intriguing technique, to verify that the blog owner, submitting a blog for domain publishing, is also the domain owner. They give the blog owner a token to add, to the domain - then verify that the token was added, before publishing the blog to the domain.

Some blog owners buy domains, for publishing a Blogger blog, and ask about how to address the domain. What address do I use for "Points to"? Other owners may ask a similar question, referencing "Destination" or maybe "Target". There is no real difference, between all 3 labels. "Destination", "Target", and "Points to" all refer to the same DNS address value. To compound the confusion, 4 different addresses are required , when addressing a Blogger custom domain root.

Custom domain setups continue to confuse blog owners - and lead sometimes to frustration, expressed in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . When I am trying to set up a custom domain for my new blog, I'm not getting the 2nd CNAME Record, but the settings get saved. In some cases, the domain may be operational - and other times, the domain will be broken, and no corrective instruction is provided.

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.

Some blog owners, publishing their blog to a custom domain, wonder about the mysterious TTL setting for the domain. What is "3600"? Why do I see "7200" in my Dig log? and Why do I have to wait 8 hours, after changing my DNS addresses? DNS latency (aka "TTL") is not understood, by many blog owners. A mistake in setting TTL can cause anger and frustration.

When you setup a custom domain, for a Blogger blog, the DNS addresses are the most important issue. A close second in importance, to righteous DNS addressing , is redirecting the domain root to the published URL. We see frequent problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why does my domain only work, with the "www" in the address? The domain root provides a backup to the published URL, in many domain setups. If the domain root is not redirected, and DNS for the "www" or other published alias is down, the domain is down.

Whether you're setting up or troubleshooting a custom domain , knowing how to read a Dig log is a useful skill. There are hundreds of registrars, serving the Internet community, each with their own dashboard. Blog owners, setting up their domains for their Blogger blogs, must deal with the syntax and terminology used by each different dashboard. A Dig log lets the blog owner identify the DNS addresses for the domain, using a consistent display.

Some blog owners publish a domain, and try to combine a Blogger blog, and a non Blogger website, in the domain root. They publish one host to the domain root - and the other to the "www" alias. This combination may be supported by the non Blogger host - but Blogger blog reliability will suffer. And the readers may become confused, when they click to view the blog, and get the website - or vice versa. There is a special relationship between the domain root and "www" alias . Blogger takes advantage of this relationship, to provide improved reliability for a blog, when published to a custom domain.

A few blog owners, who publish blogs published to custom domains, are becoming impatient , waiting for Blogger Engineering to finish the Blogger upgrade to support HTTPS / SSL. If I get a domain through Google Domains, will I be able to get HTTPS? Unfortunately, no. HTTPS / SSL is simply not available, to blogs published to custom domains .

People who speak (read / write) languages, that do not use Roman character sets, need to publish in their native language - and the Internet now supports that need . Some registrars will register domains which use non Roman character sets, in the URL. Not all Internet services will accept non Roman characters, however. My favourite online DNS diagnostic services, DigWebInterface , and intoDNS , and Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer , only use ASCII. One cannot use non ASCII ("non Roman") characters, with either service.

We periodically see the query, from confused blog owners, in AdSense Help Forum: Blogger / Host Partners , or maybe in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why does my blog not show ads, any more? It worked fine, until I changed my blog to my private domain! The blog owner does not know about the rules of Hosted AdSense accounts, vs AdSense for Content.

Over half of the problem reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , which mention custom domain URLs, start with improperly setup domains. A handful of the domain setup problems involve improperly chosen registrars - either registrars who can't provide the necessary services, or registrars who won't do their job properly. The vast majority of the setup problems start with bogus DNS addresses. And bogus DNS addresses start with the blog owners.

Free "Domains" may be worth exactly what you pay. A "free domains" registrar won't be a charity - nor are registrars, in general, non profit organisations. There will be differences - between a "free domain" - and a properly purchased domain, from a full service, reliable registrar. Features cost money - and even "free domains" have to be paid for. Google " free domains for blogs ", and see what you get. What they offer may not be what you need, for Blogger custom domain publishing.

Every domain, to be visible to the world - has to be visible to the root name servers . Your registrar adds your domain to their servers - then sets up a series of linkages, between the root name servers, and their own name servers. Your job, as the domain purchaser, is to connect the registrar name servers, and the Google servers .

A blog, published to a custom domain, is like magic. It involves smoke and mirrors - and a bit of redirection . And, it helps to follow directions.

One of the biggest strengths of Blogger custom domain publishing is its ability to work with (almost) any registrar in the world. The biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. The weakness involves language and syntax , as used by each different registrar. There are no absolute terms used, when diagnosing DNS addressing problems. That is one of the challenges, that I face daily, when telling people why their domains do not work.

I've been observing custom domain publishing, and how it's affected by applications mapped through various Google services, for a few years. The well known "Another blog", and it's successor "Key already exists", have three possible causes . Actual content, published to the URL. Bogus DNS addresses. Database corruption. If you map a Google service to a URL in your domain, even temporarily, then simply disable the service, you can end up with a domain URL that remains mapped to the service. When you try to publish your blog to that URL, you're going to see "Another blog ..." or "Key already exists ...".

As domains registered by Google Domains become more popular, we're seeing more problem reports, referencing broken domains, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . If I try to load my blog, I get the error An error occurred (code CONFLICT). Please try again. I bought my domain through Google Domains. We're enjoying the personal support options provided by Google Domains - online chat, email, and voice chat. It appears that Google Domains now provides a domain reset procedure, that may resolve the "code CONFLICT" error, on a domain by domain basis.

One of the features of custom domains, when purchased using " Buy a domain ", was the Transition period. Transition was Blogger, allowing that even with Blogger / Google controlling the domain authoritative servers (which they did, indirectly, by using eNom / GoDaddy as the registrars), and the initial DNS address setup (offered for GoDaddy purchased domains ), the stability of custom domains only starts with the domain authoritative servers, and the Root Name servers . Custom domain published blogs, to be consistently stable, can only rely on the DNS addresses being available on the local DNS servers, on a worldwide basis, 48 to 72 hours after the DNS addresses are added. This built in latency period has nothing to do with how custom domains are designed - and it's an issue over which Blogger and Google have no control.

We see confusion, from time to time, about label searches in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why don't my labels work, consistently? or Why don't all of my pages work? Looking at a blog with the problem, we'll frequently see lack of consistency in label case - some labels appear in lower case ("label"), some in upper case ("LABEL"), some in sentence case ("Label"). This might seem like an insignificant personality issue - but it's not.