How do I map my own domain to a Typepad Blog?

Sure, I'll be happy to help you and the many other Typepad customers out with an easier tutorial on how to map a domain name to a Typepad account. First off, note that you can't do this with a basic account, but need instead to have a plus or pro account for domain mapping. Still, it's only $10/month for Typepad Plus...

Let's go through this step by step.

First off, log in to your Typepad account and click on Control Panel, then Site Access, then Domain Mapping. It's critical to read what Typepad states here:

As it happens, I have an unused domain name that I can use for this experiment: PSPHELP.INFO. I registered it a while back but haven't used it yet, so this'll be perfect! As a result, I'm ready to click on Begin Here: Map a Domain Name.

The first step will be to tell Typepad what domain I'm going to use:

So far, it's pretty easy, eh?

Now I simply scroll down a bit and it'll show me the exact settings I need to get the domain setup properly:

I use MyDomain.com for all my domain name registration and management services (and recommend it if you have a pile of domains yourself, as I do) so now I need to log in to that service and select the DNS record area of the PSPHELP.INFO domain record. That looks like this by default:

Now it's just a simple data entry task, copying values from the Typepad settings to the MyDomain settings. When I'm done it looks like this:

I'll click Update and my domain record for the "www" subdomain should now point queries to my Typepad weblog!

Well, almost. Next I have to go back to the Typepad configuration sequence and click on Complete Final Step, which lets me define what people will see when they go to the specified domain name:

I'm going to have it point to my domain name rather than my Typepad home by selecting the second of the options (and needless to say "Dave's Demo Weblog" is just a placeholder, obviously!).

That's basically all I have to do. One click on Add Domain and it's all done but the waiting:

As it says, now it's just a matter of waiting for all the Typepad and MyDomain DNS and blog server configuration to be completed and propagated to the rest of the Internet.

Actually, no, that's not quite right. Once Typepad's reconfigured to support the new domain mapping, I'll have to go back to the Control Panel -> Site Access -> Domain Mapping and set it to Active:

Once that's done and enough time has passed for the Internet to be happy, everything should be as we desire. Indeed, you can test it for yourself: http://www.psphelp.info/

Hopefully that'll work. Now I have to duck out and put some content up there so it's worth visiting! :-)