Had a bit of trouble setting up the domain I impulsively bought last night so I decided to create a tutorial for all of you who might be thinking of setting up a GoDaddy domain with Blogger.
First, log in your GoDaddy account. Then, hover your mouse over the Domains tab and click on My Domains.
That will bring you to the Domains page. Click on your domain name. That will bring you to the page below. Click on Total DNS Control and MX Records.
You should now be inside the Domain Manager. You will be modifying one and adding another CNAME here. Do not delete or alter your A Record (Host). (Some tutorials will tell you to do that, but it will only cause trouble later on.)
Modify the CNAME for the host (alias) named www and point it to ghs.google.com. This means that if a user types in www.yourdomain.com, Google will dynamically point the user to any Google server that’s available and loads your page fastest.
So now your www.yourdomain.com should work fine upon publishing in Google (it won’t yet, you haven’t set up Blogger yet). But what if a user decides to just type yourdomain.com, without the www prefix? It will probably load up the GoDaddy parked website. So you have to add another CNAME with the host as yourdomain.com and point it also to ghs.google.com.
And that is all we have to do on the GoDaddy front. Let’s now move on to your Blogger account. Login to your Blogger account, select your blog, and go to the Settings tab and then click on the Publishing subtab.
Right now you’re publishing on Blogger, but we want to use your new domain name so go ahead and click on Custom Domain.
Okay, that will bring you to the page below.
On the same page, click on Switch to Advanced Settings, like in the screenshot below.
On the Advanced Settings page, type your domain name in the box. Don’t forget the www prefix. Then press the Save Settings button.
Now your domain which is www.yourdomain.com should be working. However the URL yourdomain.com is probably still parked at GoDaddy. Let’s remedy that, shall we? Check the checkbox that will allow Google to redirect yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com, like in the screenshot. Then Save Settings again.
Voila! Now both ways of typing in your URL are working! Yay!
Okay no. It might not work RIGHT away. Or maybe it will. This one: www.yourdomain.com will probably work right away. But this one: yourdomain.com might take a few minutes to an hour or maybe more, not sure. So if it’s not working, give it a couple of hours.
Don’t go tweaking all your other settings in vain. Don’t listen to people telling you to delete your A record, forward this, redirect that… Because I did and it caused me a lot of headache last night! Until I figured out the meaning of patience. Hahaha.
Good luck!
This is a great help (wish I had it 6 most ago) I tried doing this and ended up just buying my domain through google, SO much easier. I have the rest of my domains and hosting through godaddy though.
Hm, so is your new domain up and running now?
Hi Sheila!
I initially wanted to do that, but Google only accepts payments through Google Checkout.. bummer. Am kind of paranoid about releasing my credit card info to too many companies, so I’m sticking with PayPal. :/
Hey Spife, yeah, it’s at http://www.junkfoodheaven.com 🙂
But if you mean my bodysouldetox.com, ugh, Ploghost is *still* working on that one! 🙁
This is a nice tutorial, I’d love to put up a link to this post in my blog. I’d experienced adding a custom domain in my blogspot blog just before I started blogging in WordPress. The steps are pretty much the same, however my domain name wasn’t bought from GoDaddy.
I like your new site. All the best!
Don’t listen to people telling you to delete your A Records? Come on. I am one of the people who will insist that you delete yout A Records. It is not some sort of April Fool here.
Talking about patience, I never needed it because I manage all my DNS on zone edit. They take 3 mins to do what GoDaddy will do in 24-72 hrs. Honestly
I recently walked somebody through the exact same thing, your tutorial is really well done. I actually took a shortcut and had them forward their domain to their blog (with masking enabled), then had them adjust settings in their blogger. The results were close to the same, but your way is probably the right way to do it, I’ll send them this article. Thanks.
hmmm…if textng doesn’t seem to catch your attention, maybe this will. buni, u there?? BZZZZZ!
Hi Apple, thanks so much! If you will, link to my new domain, randomdetox.com 😀
Hi AZ, I’m new to this domain thing so what is zone edit? Is it another domain service? For the A Records in GoDaddy, it’s perfectly harmless so I would suggest leaving it as is. Also, if you were to purchase hosting from GoDaddy and create custom email addresses, you’d definitely need that A Record. 🙂
Hi J Twittie, I’m not sure if forwarding will ensure that both yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com will work, but if it did, great! 🙂
Hey Gim, stop spamming me just because I’m too lazy to return your phone calls! ;P
Nice. Might come in handy soon. 😀
GREAT STUFF!!
I wish I would have seen this Web site sooner.
Hi Xio, bookmark it so you don’t forget 🙂
NYC Man, well the next you get a domain from GoDaddy you’ll know where to go 🙂
Hi there, thanks for the explanation. So, you bought a domain name from GoDaddy and pay yearly. Do you mind telling me where you host your site?
I am planning to get my own domain name too.
Thanks in advance.
Hi myj4u,
This tutorial is for GoDaddy domains hosted on Blogger. So if you follow my instructions, you don’t need to pay for hosting at all, just let Google host it for you for free. 🙂
Thanks for this! I intend to buy a domain sometime soon. This is really helpful! 😀
Hi. Thanks for sharing this useful tutorial. I was thinking about buying my own domain and was looking for info on practical issues like the ones you focused here.
I´m still wondering if it is better to buy hosting or doing this way, don´t know the advantages or disadvantages. Do you have experiences you could share?
Regards.
Hi Abbie, you’re welcome 🙂
Hi Mize!
Well depends on how you want to use your domain.
I find that if all you need is a blog, then using Blogger + GoDaddy does the trick very well. It’s very easy to use and implement, and there’s lots of support from Google and GoDaddy so I’m quite happy with that. I don’t like the stress of tinkling with back end technology. Providing quality content on my blog is challenging enough haha.
But if you’re thinking of adding more than a blog like perhaps a main site, bulletin boards, chat, etc.. Maybe experiment with different platforms, applications.. Doing some SEO… then I would advise you to go get your own host so you can manipulate it all you like.
But make sure you choose a very reliable host. Check how much downtime they experience in a week, check how much bandwith/space they offer, if they’re using CPanel or a customized admin interface, etc., etc., etc. Especially check what people are saying about them.
I’d give you a recommendation but the one host I signed up gave terrible service that, even though a month has passed I still cannot use my domain for anything but experimentation. So that’s why I’m a bit disillusioned with hosting, and I prefer Google because of the reliability.
Good luck whatever you decide! 🙂
hehehe uh.. but im not in goodaddy I’ve to host my dns first in dnspark.net hehehe.
Hi Flisha. Thanks again for sharing your experience in this subject. I´m not a techno girl too, that´s why I´ve been hesitating in buying my own domain.
I´ve asked a blogger friend for advice and she recommended Godaddy as well, but I read a few negative comments in blogs that review hosting services and I was confused.
I´m going to try the way you do it because it seems a very good and cheap solution, once I only want to use my blogs. I´ll let you know how it went when I´m done. Cheers!
thx for information!
i’ve been able to link up my blogger with custom domain thru godaddy. Everything is running good except that my google ads are nowhere to found. They are just blank spaces. The ads show if you preview it in blogger but not in my custom domain. http://iamechatronics.com
clark
Nice work Brother…Sweetness!
Thank you!! thank you!! thank you!!!
It worked in 10min that was great, I love the screen shots.
http://www.frenchunderware.com
hi flisha, would you happen to know about this case?
I bought a domain thru google/godaddy (custom domain) and had an error during payment confirmation. This caused a problem, now my new domain name wasn’t set up automatically.
When I try to type in the new domain name in the ‘already have a custom domain'(advanced settings) box it would prompt ‘another blog is hosted in this domain.
Sorry to bother you about this but I am just trying all possibilities.
Thanks
Um, you are a genius! After five calls to godaddy, and a few fists through the wall, I came across your site and it was the easiest tutorial. Go Daddy and Blogger should post this on their sites. Thank you, Thank you!
Sincerely,
ADA
http://www.adesperateact.com
Thanks for making this post. I also had to look around the net to find the appropriate method of getting my blogger page to godaddy and your post was the most detailed and broken down. The DNS server took a little time to refresh (3hrs), but that was the only problem that I ran in to. Thanks again.
http://www.korewaps3.com
So far, it this has not worked for me. Neither has changing the "forwarding" settings. I thought to myself maybe I should wait 24hrs because they do say it may take 24hrs to update the settings, but supposedly Godaddy says it is already done since I am able to change the settings again. I am lost on what to do. This sucks, but thanks so much for this post. It was helpful.
You really should wait 24 hours because it takes time for the settings to propagate. That means that it could be done wherever GoDaddy's servers are (like in the US) but it hasn't reflected (propagated) to wherever you are yet (like if you're in the Philippines). So even if you can access settings already, it doesn't necessarily mean you can see its effects right away.
awesome ya nice article..I own a website i got that website Domain name Registered in the site tucktail.com..Reseller of godaddy site it is
By far, the most helpful information I've found that allowed me to make the switch after hours of phone calls and frustrations. THANKS!!!!
peace~elaine
thank you for sharing this vital info! i woulddn’t have manage setting up my domain if it weren’t for your helpful post!
Hello! I was confused I already have an account in GoDaddy.com but I didn’t purchase anything there, just sign in only. Is this tutorial only applicable to people who have already purchase own domain in GoDaddy.com? I want my blogger to be in .com but I’m scared in purchasing in GoDaddy.com. Can someone help me, I want to use only Paypal. I hope it uses Paypal. And also, does it apply to 2 blogger accounts? I have 2 blogger account and I want to make them .com, do I need to have two accounts in GoDaddy.com?
Hi Rannessa,
Yup you do have to buy a domain from GoDaddy before you can follow this tutorial. And yes, GoDaddy does use Paypal, so no worries. And no, if you have 2 blogger accounts, you don’t have to have 2 accounts in Godaddy. But you do need to have two domains, one per blog. 🙂 Hope that helps you out. 🙂