The Real Blogger Status

People with multiple identities have been objects of interest for many years. Occasionally, we see activity by the less public faces. Sometimes, odd behaviour by Blogger will make you think that you have a second personality - one that you (your more public face, you hope), of course, aren't aware.

We've been getting a lot of reports of some well known problems recently, from blogs published to Google Custom Domains. Another blog is already hosted at this address. and Server Not Found Error 404 No, Chuck, tell us something that we didn't know. When I analyse a custom domain problem, I always start with a DNS analysis, expressed using an excerpted Dig log . Typically, I'll see Symmetrical Main Domain mydomain.com. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. www.mydomain.com. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. or Asymmetrical Main Domain (aka " Google Apps " configuration) mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 64.233.179.121 mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 72.14.207.121 www.mydomain.com. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. This weekend, though, we're seeing a variant on the latter configuration, reported as usual in anxious queries For 3 days I received a message that the blog was redirecting. Then I got error 404 for a day and decided to switch to blogspot and back to my custom domain. Got an error t...

Custom domains, to the typical blogger, should be incredibly simple to setup. Functionally, the setup process is two simple steps . Create a DNS entry for the URL of your choice, pointing to Google. Publish the blog to the URL. But for all of that simplicity, they are seemingly random in their failures. Why are custom domains so apparently randomly unreliable ? One example, where we can see random behaviour, is in surgical DNS changes. One of the recent causes of the flood of Another blog is already hosted at this address. and Server Not Found Error 404 is a reference to a DNS server that isn't in service any more . Many bloggers, lately, complain of the "Server Not Found Error 404" symptom. I'll look at an HTTP Access Log for the domain, and see Host IP address = 66.249.81.121 followed by <h1>Server·Not·Found</h1>(LF) <h2>Error·404< /h2>(LF) Next, I look at an excerpted Dig log for the domain, and see mydomain.com. 3600 IN A...

Blogger has thousands of computers that they control and support - their servers. They have millions of computers that they don't control, but still try to support - our computers. Then there are the remote servers, to where we (try to) publish blogs using FTP . They don't own, or support those computers, and that relationship creates a lot of challenges when we want to publish our Blogger blogs to those non-Google computers.

One odd question which has been popping up occasionally from puzzled bloggers would be the nature of the Blogger Custom Domain Redirect option I selected "Redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com.", but I'm still getting a " 404 Not Found ". What is up here? or Why do I keep getting a parked page , even after I selected the Redirect option? So, we Dig the DNS configuration , and see www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. or maybe mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 68.178.232.100 www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. parkwebwin-v01.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net (68.178.232.100) 68.178.128.0 - 68.178.255.255 GoDaddy.com, Inc. And there, ladies and gentlemen, is your answer. The first configuration will give you a 404, because there is no DNS definition for "mydomain.com". The second configuration will give you the GoDaddy server "68.178.232.100", and a parked page display. If you want the Blogger Redirect option to hav...

This month, we again see reports of several frequent FTP Publishing problem symptoms. The well known Your publish is taking longer than expected. To continue waiting for it to finish, click here. and ConnectException: Connection timed out. These symptoms have been seen fairly recently , but now we have an additional detail. Some reports are from bloggers who have examined the server activity and firewall logs , and who explicitly state that the server is getting no incoming traffic. This could, conceivably, be another episode of the Server IP address / Name setting change. If you are suffering from this problem, please provide diagnostic information The blog BlogSpot URL (if applicable). The blog domain URL. The name of the server hosting company. The Blogger FTP server setting value. as part of your problem report, in BHG: Publishing Trouble . Please, be socially conscious and start a new thread for your report. >> Top

Periodically, when reviewing the many problem reports about Google Custom Domains, and especially those reporting the ubiquitous "Another blog ..." error message , we'll look at the DNS configuration and see a partial DNS setup www.mydomain.com. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. yet the blogger reporting the problem states I setup my domain with both the root, and the "www" alias, defined. This is what I setup! Whatever can the problem be?