Moving to a Custom Domain

When you decide for sure that you will switch for a custom domain, the next thing is to plan and implement the move. Given below is a brief checklist for the domain transition process.

1. Purchase the Domain (if you don’t own already) – If you use the Blogger wizard the purchase (and setup) is quite trivial. But if the top level domain you want is not provided by the wizard, then you will have to purchase it from an external registrar.
2. Reconfigure External Services – It is most likely that you will have several external services such as visitor meters, feeds etc installed on your blog. Update the respective accounts of those services to reflect the change of blog URL. Some examples for such services are:
1. AdSense (if you have limited the URLs which can publish ads)
2. Google Webmaster Tools – re-submit the blog and sitemaps
3. FeedBurner or such feeds
4. Technorati, Alexa and other such rating services
5. Google Analytics, SiteMeter, Cluster Maps and similar visitor meters
3. Inform your Readers – Even after you switch to a custom domain, Blogger ensures that your previous BlogSpot URL will be redirected to the new domain. Nevertheless, inform your readers about the forthcoming change, say, by writing a post in advance.
4. Effect the Transition – Go the Settings -> Publishing section on your blog’s admin console and enable the custom domain. If you purchase the custom domain via Blogger, setting up your blog to use it is a no-brainer as Blogger will do the required technical configurations for you. However, if you buy it from a third party, then you will have to manage it yourself.
   

Last, but certainly not least, is the most important question; what will happen to your existing PageRank (PR) because of this move? You will have a temporary drop in PageRank as your custom domain is new to Google. But the good news is that you will very quickly recover the PR as Blogger will setup a 301 Redirect – Moved Permanently on its servers.

The transfer of PR can happen as quickly as within a couple of weeks as confirmed by a Google employee on the Google Webmaster Help forum.

References:
Custom Domains - The Real Blogger Status

Related Posts

• Custom Domains for BlogSpot
• Deciding to Move to a Custom Domain

Deciding to Move to a Custom Domain

If you are starting a fresh blog, then publishing it on a custom domain straight-away is not much of a problem. If you already own a domain or do not want to use the blogspot.com domain, then switching to a custom domain right at the beginning is a safer and simpler method.

If, however, your blog has been running for a while under blogspot.com and has incoming links, some PageRank and also installed third party widgets, then moving to a custom domain needs some planning.

First, let’s have a look at some reasons that will make going for a custom domain worthwhile.

• Independent domain – Unlike a yourblogname.blogspot.com URL which is just a sub-domain under BlogSpot, a custom domain gives the chance to publish at an independent domain
• Ability to integrate with an existing domain – If you already have a web site, say at www.mydomain.com, then a custom domain gives the chance to integrate your blog to the same domain, say at blog.mydomain.com
• Intangible asset – In this information age, a popular domain is a valuable asset. So if you own a custom domain and your blog ramps up in popularity, that is added value for you
• Good for branding – If you are using the blog for some business/freelance activity, then a custom domain related to your business brand is better than a blogspot.com URL
  

Once you decide that you want to go for a custom domain, the next step is to prepare a checklist of things to do for the transition, which is going to be the focus of the next article in this series.

Related Posts

• Custom Domains for BlogSpot
• Moving to a Custom Domain

Custom Domains for BlogSpot

Starting your own blog on Blogger is pretty simple. Just follow three steps and you are ready to go. You post some interesting entries and then you want to share it with your friends and family. That’s when you fire an email saying “hey, check out my new blog at http://yourblogname.blogspot.com”.

Did you ever wonder why is it that your blog URL ends with blogspot.com and not just .com? Did you ever wonder why is it that some of your friends have blog URLs that looks like http://www.yourfriendsname.com? In this post, we’ll see why.

The default URL assigned by Blogger when you create a blog lies in the blogspot.com domain. A domain in Internet jargon here is a set of names. For example, the .com domain is the entire set of Internet names that end with .com and the domain blogspot.com represents a sub set of this bigger set. In technical terms, blogspot.com is called a sub-domain. (Each sub-domain can be further sub divided into smaller sub-domain.) This system of names used on the Internet is called the Domain Name System or the DNS in short. The DNS is a distributed, hierarchical system that governs the way Internet names (or domain names) are assigned and also how computers work with those names.

You cannot arbitrarily pick a domain name and use it because that name must first be registered with an authority that controls the particular domain or sub-domain. The .com is called a Generic Top Level Domain and it is controlled by an organization called the ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Similarly, we can say that blogspot.com is a sub-domain (under .com) for which Blogger has acquired the right to use and maintain. Therefore, while Blogger has no problem in assigning the URL yourblogname.blogspot.com as the default URL, they cannot assign the name yourblogname.com because they have no authority over the .com domain. This is where the custom domains come in to play.

What Blogger refers to as a custom domain is a domain that does NOT end with blogspot.com. If you want your blog to have the URL yourblogname.com, first you must acquire the right to use that domain name. For Blogger blogs this can be done via Blogger itself as described here. Otherwise you can purchase it from a third party domain registrar. Domain registrars are organization accredited by the ICANN to manage Generic Top Level Domains on its behalf. (There is another type of top level domains called County Code Top Level Domains which are managed by the naming authorities in those respective countries)

Once you purchase a custom domain such as yourblogname.com, then you can instruct Blogger to publish your blog using that custom domain. But before you decide to go for a custom domain, make sure that you analyze the pros and cons of custom domains. In follow up articles we’ll take a look at why you should use custom domains and what things you should worry about.

Related Posts

• Deciding to Move to a Custom Domain
• Moving to a Custom Domain