The Real Blogger Status

Some bloggers, who want to publish their blog to a Google Custom Domain, elect to not purchase the domain using the " Buy A Domain " wizard, still decide to accept their domain DNS configuration from a third party - the domain registrar. Many registrars advise use of URL forwarding, and this is known to cause problems with Blogger . DaVe L, in Google Blogger Help - Publishing Trouble: 404 Error/Register.com domain issue , writes Since this past sunday, my blog www.shortandsweetnyc.com has been getting that 404 error when I enter the URL. I registered the domain name through register.com and have called them several times to try to figure out what the issue was. They have been telling me that everything is fine on their end and it looks like the problem is on blogger.com's end. And here we have yet a third incident involving Register.Com, in a single week . An HTTP access trace shows us: Sending request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: shortandsweetnyc.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0...

The Blogosphere, and particularly the BlogSpot address space, has been known, for some time, as a space where dodgy content is located . BlogSpot has been used for delivery of visually undesirable content (aka porn), and non visually undesirable content (aka hacking and spam) for some time. In January 2008, that changed , and publishers of blogs containing various forms of hacking / porn / spam found their activities hampered (though not completely shut down). Many bloggers who wished to continue to provide us with antisocial and illegal content, using Google servers, started to relocate their payload, so Blogger could not detect the malicious blogs by merely scanning all of BlogSpot.

Danasoft - Free Signs For Your Blog How scared should you be - did I just hack your computer?? Highlight from here, ==> Advice from the makers of the sign: These signs are created and served by our webserver in real-time for each person that views them. Your IP address and other information are only visible to YOU, not to others, but because people see their own IP address and computer information displayed on a blog, they think that their information can be seen by everyone! Get back to work!! <== to here, and find out. See Geolocation: Where Are My Readers Located? for more advice. Better, spend your time publishing informative and interesting content - make your readers feel genuinely welcome.

Even though newly setup domains, using the " Buy A Domain " wizard, are apparently using the new "216" series Google Apps servers , I was recently advised that the engineer setting them up has still not given the green light for publicizing these yet. Until advised, I'll still advise you to use the (old) Google Apps servers, in your Asymmetrical Custom Domain DNS setup. mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 64.233.179.121 mydomain.com. 3600 IN A 72.14.207.121 www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. Be patient, these are yet to be released officially. mydomain.com. 1800 IN A 216.239.32.21 mydomain.com. 1800 IN A 216.239.34.21 mydomain.com. 1800 IN A 216.239.36.21 mydomain.com. 1800 IN A 216.239.38.21 www.mydomain.com. 3600 IN CNAME ghs.google.com. Watch this space, and be patient. >> Top

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 ...

This is a cry echoed by many, and for some time. Some, who ask this question, ask a similar question too, " Why Isn't Blogger Solving The "Another blog is already hosted at this address" Problem? " And there is but one answer, to both questions. Google is solving "the problem" . One problem, at a time. But "the problem" will never be solved, as long as bloggers keep referring to it as "the problem" . It simply isn't one problem - it's many problems, with the same symptom.

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...