Wednesday, March 27, 2013

I Dropped the 'blogspot' from My Blogger Domain Name and You Can Too! (plus a BONUS Corgi Short)

I am not affiliated with nor have I been compensated in any way by the brands mentioned herein. I share because "sharing is caring." I learned that in Kindergarten.

Down below, after the technical stuff: Bonus Corgi Pictorial Short Story "Frosty Doesn't Look Good, Mama"!
DON'T MISS IT!

Okay, so you probably haven't noticed, but a few weeks ago I switched my blog's URL (domain name) from www.chroniclesofcardigan.blogspot.com to www.chroniclesofcardigan.com.

That does not mean that I left Blogger and/or became self-hosted on some other blogging platform, for example WordPress. Nope, I'm still using Blogger (for free*), it's just that I followed the Blogger on-screen directions to add my own custom (previously purchased and "parked" at GoDaddy.com**) domain name.  

I will explain why I did this in a bit.

But first, let me tell you why - about a year ago - I went to GoDaddy.com and bought the custom domain:

SO NO ONE ELSE WOULD

Yes, friends. I was afraid someone else would. Why? Well why wouldn't they? ;) Okay, that and because the custom name is easier for people to remember and it looks a lot better (than the blogspot URL) on business cards, and everywhere else on the Internet. But mostly it was so no one else could take it and lure unsuspecting peeps over to some fake Chronicles of Cardigan page with spammy links to window washing and tree removal services, for example.

The trouble is, after I bought the domain name, I was afraid to actually use it. (what if my blog disappeared? no one could find it anymore? I screwed something up beyond repair?) So I did the next best thing and forwarded my new custom domain to my blogspot address:

If someone typed chroniclesofcardigan.com (in the URL address field),
they'd be automatically directed to chroniclesofcardigan.blogspot.com.

Forwarding is easy and (at least with GoDaddy) can be accomplished with just a couple clicks from the Domain Details (Domain Information > Forwarding) page. (Hint: Go to your domain provider's Help section and search for "forwarding.")

Okay, so fast forward 13 months and on this one random day, I just decided it was time to go for it. And I read a bunch of blog articles about why I should go for it***. And looked for user feedback on whether or not their blogs were obliterated after having gone for it. And decided that I could live with a couple months (if that) of not being as searchable in search engines.

To edit your domain name in Blogger, get to this screen and click Edit in the Publishing box.

And here I am. And here's the ugly:

Things that Broke after the Switch: 
My blog roll (Blogger gadget) went blank. (But because I had read that the same thing happened to other users, and that it was a known Blogger bug, and that I would just need to add the blog links again, I was not alarmed when I noticed it.)

That was the only thing that broke.

According to my stats, I'm still getting views from search engines. In fact, I haven't noticed much of a change there, if any.

And in case you're curious, Blogger is redirecting all traffic from my previous "blogspot" domain name to the new one. That means any and all existing hyperlinks to that old address will redirect here (for as long as I keep the custom domain name). Additionally, the old blog feed (for those who have subscribed/followed my RSS) redirects, too. That means YOU SHOULD NOT RESUBSCRIBE (unless you want see my blog twice in your reader, and you will; I tested it)!

And if at any time I decide I don't want to associate the custom domain name with this blog anymore, I can just go into my Blogger blog settings and switch back to the original "blogspot" name. Too easy.

So have you been contemplating making a domain name switch yourself?

If yes and you have a Blogger blog, and use GoDaddy.com to obtain your new custom domain, there is a SUPER EASY tool at GoDaddy.com that will do almost all the work for you:

Note: You must be logged into your GoDaddy account before using the tool.

In fact, the folks at Blogger think this tool is so awesome, they've written an entire blog post about it at Blogger Buzz (hint: GO THERE!), including step-by-step instructions for switching your blog to your new domain (once you've updated your DNS records at GoDaddy using this tool). (By the way, don't ask me what DNS records are; I have no flocking idea. Just trust me; you will need to update them using this tool.)

And that's all there is to it, friends! I hope this has been helpful!

* I use Blogger (vs. self-hosting on another platform) for a variety of reasons, mostly because I am lazy. It is a personal preference, and I believe personal preferences are okay. :) I pay nothing to use Blogger; however, there is a limit to free image storage space, which I plowed through in under a year. Therefore, I pay $4.99 per year for the lowest available increment of extra image storage space through Google. When my hard drive crashed a few months ago and I lost thousands of stored images, that $4.99 annual fee seemed like a really small price to pay for back-up.

** GoDaddy.com is NOT the only domain name provider. I chose them because they were the only provider I had ever heard of, thanks to their (horrible) Super Bowl commercials. As of this writing, it costs $12.99 annually for me to have my .com custom domain (with absolute basic service). I've set it to renew automatically (highly recommended).

*** You should read the article at the other end of this link @ Spice Up Your Blog (a trusted source of mine) if you are still undecided (or even if you're not). In easy-to-follow Q&A format, it thoroughly covers some of the things I've mentioned in this post, plus several others. Also, because there is great user feedback in the comments, it really helped to put my mind at ease.

*****

And now, your BONUS CORGI SHORT (story):

Frosty Doesn't Look Good, Mama!

In the front yard on Tuesday...


Hey, Dewi, something's wrong with Frosty!



Frosty? You okay, man??




Hey, Mama? What happened to Frosty?




"Blah blah blah...went bye-bye...blah...all gone...blah blah...dead"




Oh, Frost-ayyyyyyyyy!!!

The End

Double-Bonus Outtakes:



Dude, where's the catering service around this set?




The "Catering Service" does not recommend the yellow snow.

;-)

18 comments:

  1. I did this a few months ago. I made a huge mistake though... I bought the domain through Google. I'm trying to get access to it now, which has been a pain in the butt. People should definitely buy their domain like you did!

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  2. Ha ha poor old Frosty. We were thinking all things Corgi with yesterdays' corgi video we posted. Thanks for the info. We signed up to Spice Up Your Blog. We need to look into doing something about our. Thanks we will sit down and have a good read. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
    Best wishes Molly

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  3. We had had nutty stuff happen too when we first switched too. Don't you guys look adorable
    Snorts,
    Benny & Lily

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  4. Poor Frosty, we knew him well...he'll be back next year :) Brave of you to change your link but so glad it worked out well

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  5. I wish I'd known about your switching angst. I did this a long while back and was amazed at how easy it was (though I lost my blogroll, too). Great post and loved the short!

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  6. A brave and bold move! Glad it all worked out!
    And our condolences on poor Frosty's demise :(

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  7. I had no idea you could associate a blogger blog with your own domain name. Good for you in facing your fears and doing something new.

    I'm getting ready to relaunch my home buyer website. I was smart enough to figure out how to set up a "hidden" site where I could tweak the design. But I chickened out and hired a friend to move the new files back to my domain name. It should happen early in April. I hope my experience is as good as yours.

    BTW, loved the "short." And I'm not at all unhappy to see Frosty disappear. Unfortunately, I see many millions of his friends coming down outside as we speak. :)

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  8. We recently moved from Blogspot to Wordpress and my "things that broke" list was about 86 miles longer. I DO like that new web address though! Very clean :0)

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  9. I've had this open on my browser for days now and finally read through it. I already have my own jackiebouchard.com domain, so I suppose I should consider adding poochsmooches.com as well. Sounds easy enough, although I'm sure I'd find a way to screw it up! A bit crazy busy right now, but maybe after I live through the next coupla weeks I'll look into this some more and check out the Spice Up Your Blog as well.

    Love the Frosty pics. :)

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  10. Just gave it a try, and it was as easy as you said! Thanks!

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  11. Not working for me :( keeps coming up with a message of 'Multiple requests in progress. Please try again shortly.' Has anyone else had this message?

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  12. I DID IT!!!! FINALLY! Note that I left a comment OVER A YEAR AGO saying that I needed to get on this. Well, I finally did. I had a little snag for a few minutes when Blogger said it couldn't "verify" my account name (or some such), but all I had to do was click some helpful stuff for a 3-step process to verify my a/c with GoDaddy and then I was in business! Thank you for this!! I know you're away from the blog right now, but this was really helpful!

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  13. I know you're on bloggy break... but when you get back you'll see my previous comment about finally doing this! But I just realized I have a question and I'm hoping I didn't screw things up. I bought the www.poochsmooches.com domain, thinking the 'net just kinda knows that if someone only types in "poochsmooches.com" it will auto-add the "www" and take them to my site. Well... That doesn't seem to be happening when I test it out. But I notice it does work for your site. If I type your URL w/ or w/out the www, I end up here. Did you purchase both?? Or does it just take a while of your site being around for the redirect to start happening? (I'm really dumb at this stuff - hope this isn't a super dumb question!) :)

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  14. Hi Y'all!

    BOL!!! I've just got to get my Editor to break down and take the plunge. Like you, she bought the domain but then got busy with somethin' she says "allows me to eat". BOL!!! Maybe this will inspire her....saw this post link on Jackie's site.

    Y'all come by now,
    Hawk aka BrownDog

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  15. I just came across this post today because I too just bought my domain name and have my blog hosted by blogger. Did you have any trouble getting Linkwithin to work afterwards. I noticed that now it takes people to a page that says you are now about to enter a site no longer associated with blogger. How do I get it to connect directly to the updated link? Thanks in advance for any and all help. My blog link is here. http://www.howdidigetheremyamazinggenealogyjourney.com/. If you go to it, try Linkwithin and you'll see what I mean.

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    1. I see it, Andrea. Very strange. I don't recall having any issues like this with Linkwithin, so I can't be sure of the problem. However, my instinct would be for you to remove the gadget from your blog, restart your computer and then add it back (it might take a little while for the gadget to kick in after you add it back). If that doesn't work, there's a link to Linwithin support from the "Blogger install" directions page. I'd send them an inquiry. Good luck!

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