It was the news I waited for a long time before I decided to switch my blogger blog to WordPress over 9 months ago. Google’s free blogging service Blogger announced this much awaited very useful feature that lets Blogger users switch from blogspot blogger subdomains to their own custom domain names.
The FTP publishing option was always open which allowed you to use the blogger publishing tool to blog on your own domain name and web hosting and even let you remove the blogger navbar. The new version of Blogger is supporting this switch. Your old BlogSpot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers and you retain all the Google Juice (pagerank) too.
How will it work? Buy a domain name from a reputed domain name registrar (We use GoDaddy), fix up your DNS and Blogger settings and you are done.
“So far, you have a domain name but none of the servers on the internet know what to do with it yet. To take care of this, you need to create a CNAME record for your domain with the DNS, associating your domain with ghs.google.com. The exact procedure for doing this varies depending on your domain registrar”
“Once you’ve told one particular DNS server about your new domain, it will have to transfer that information to all the other servers on the internet, which could take a couple of days. So be aware that your new domain won’t necessarily be working instantly.”
Here is how to create a CNAME Record with GoDaddy. Each hosting service has different ways to create CNAME records.
Recently WordPress.com let WordPress.com bloggers switch to their own custom domain names. This is good for newbie bloggers, who can start with free, supported, zero cost hosted blogging services, and easily make the switch to their own domain name if they are serious about developing a long term successful blog.
I can see the smile on Blogspot bloggers as they read this. I still love wordpress and an happy to have made the switch. (6 month review)