Dave, I’ve been working with Google’s Blogger service for a while, running a weblog, but looking at your site and various others makes me want to have everything appear on my own domain, not theirs. So, how do I do it? Lots of people I’ve talked to say that it’s not possible with Blogger, but I can’t believe it.
While I have a basic blogger account of my own, I’m not an expert on how to work with the Google system. Instead, I asked my colleague Sarah Lewis of Abundant Media to share her expertise in this area. Here’s what she shared:
To configure your blogger account to work with a specific domain name, you need to have a Web hosting account with that domain name already set up, an account that allows you to access your files via regular FTP. Once you have that, you’ll start by logging in to your Blogger account, and, from the Dashboard, click the “Change Settings” link (it looks like a gear) for the blog you wish to change.
Click the “Publishing” link; it’s just under the tabs at the top. You’ll see something like this:
Click the “FTP” link (it’s highlighted in the picture). You’ll see a bunch of fields you need to fill out. I’ve numbered them in the picture below, and we’ll go through them one by one.
To fill in this screen, you’ll need to gather some information about your domain name and the FTP account that’s set up for it. Typically most of this information is in an order confirmation email from your host. If you’re already using FTP, it’s the same information. Here’s what you’ll need:
1. FTP Server: Frequently, this is just your domain name (in my case, somethingepic.com).
2. Blog URL: If you are going to make your blog the main part of your site, this will be http://www.yourdomain.com . Make sure to put in the http:// part, and don’t put a slash at the end.
3. FTP Path: This is the trickiest value. The easiest way to figure out what it should be is to log into your account with an FTP client. When you connect, navigate to the place where your main website files go. In my case, that means I click on a folder called “public_html”. The folder is typically called “public_html” or “www” but it varies by host. Once you are in the right place, your FTP client will tell you the path. Take a look at the highlighted portion of this picture:
You’ll just want to type in whatever you see there, in my case, /public_html/ .
4. Blog Filename: This can be anything you want, but normally, you’ll probably just use index.html . I’ve gone with index.php so that I can use some PHP features, but there’s no need to do that unless you have a specific reason.
5. FTP Username and FTP Password: These are just what they say they are. Your host should have given you these when you signed up, and if you did step 3, you’ve just used them.
Once you’ve filled in all of these items, just go to the bottom of the page and click “Save Settings”. If all was well, you’ll see a message at the top that says “Settings Were Saved Successfully. You must Republish your blog to see the changes.” Go ahead and click the “Republish” button. Depending on the size of your blog, this could take a little while, but eventually you’ll receive a “Your blog published successfully.” message.
Take a look at your domain. Doesn’t your blog look nice there? Test the links and make sure they work. If they don’t, there’s probably a setting that’s not quite right.
If you have any trouble with any part of this process, leave a comment and I’ll try to help you through it. The nice thing about Blogger is that even if you mess it up, your posts are still saved on their site, so you won’t lose anything if things don’t go as planned.
I found this site while I was trying to find whether it would be better to keep my blog as a sub-domain or to move it to my main domain, replacing my current main page. I have my blog hosted on blogger.com. Blogger offer a facility whereby you can re-locate the address of your blog from the default site (in my case, WaveCrestIT.blogspot.com) to a sub-address of your existing domain name, a sub-domain, ie blog.WaveCrestIT.co.uk.
Currently, due to some diligent posting on my part, I am getting more hits on my blog than on the main page on my website. Not only that, but I have set up my blog so that it strongly resembles the look and feel of my main website and has the same call-to-action functionality. I also have a summary of the text from my website’s main page in a side-bar on the blog and plan to completely integrate my blog into the site as a whole.
My question is this: Would it be better, with respect to search engine optimisation and other factors, to dispense with my current main page entirely (it is overly wordy) and just have the main domain (ie. http://www.WaveCrestIT.co.uk) point straight to the main page of the blog? The blog is not hosted on my site, it is hosted on blogger.com. Will this have any negative impact on the subsidiary pages of the site (which are hosted in my own space) or on the blog itself?
I have done some research into this but could only find articles on related issues and none that dealt with the question directly. Some of the more useful links are listed on my blog:
http://blog.wavecrestit.co.uk/2012/09/making-your-blog-sub-domain-of-your.html
where is ftp i am unable to found that and when i add that setting on my blog it simply redirect url address instead of showing that on my site
Here is an interesting domain up for grabs:
architectforbusiness.com
http://sedo.com/search/details.php4?domain=architectforbusiness.com&trackingRequestId=25570873&language=us&origin=search&version=3
i just transferred into custom domain thanks for Google for producing free hosting. 🙂
Just recently started blogging and thinking of creating a website of my own. This is very helpful. Thank you for the information and tips!
Hi,
I was looking for such kind of interesting and informative post. It helped me a lot.
Thank you so much!
I hosted my site in blogger with a custom domain but with my friend’s computer IP address,
i can’t get into my site. but with proof IP i would able to see my site, i thought the problem with browser (I checked with Google Analytics) but almost all browser visitors came to my site.I don’t know what is the problem. Is the problem with my Server or Browser?
That was absolutely perfect, thank you so much for the tutorial…I have recently transfered all my blogs on blogger to custom domain address.
Why do all this and incur extra hosting charges when you can just redirect the cname record? Hmm. I’d like to have someone change http://www.whozzle.com to point at my blog – even though I don’t own it. Is this possible. 🙂
Great post, very useful. thanks!
Thanks for the tip, it’s simpler than I thought. I will create a blogger blog for my site and call it blog.jbasket.com.au.
THAT was extremely helpful. You almost made me brave enough to try it!
By doing it the way you described, would I continue to create all my posts in Blogger?
Also, there are so many web hosting companies that it scary to try to choose. I don’t want to get a really SLOW domain, would that will crash all the time, or one that has rude customer service. How do I really know which is the best?
Hi there…thanks for the sharring…one question from me…if i had a trouble with my blog after i’ve changed my blogspot to my own domain and publish it using http://FTP…is it possible for me to set my blogspot to my old blogspot domain…which is like,www.great-income-business.blogspot.com
Hope you can answer my question…really appreciate it…tq…
I think there are some new additions to this. Merely creating CName record is not solving the issue. There is another step called creating four ‘A’ records.
Any idea about this?
I dont have money for spend on hosting so still m on blogger free hosting which is agreeable to me hehe 🙂
Thanks for the info. I should have use wordpress in first place since i can’t use my own domain name with my own hosting geee.
Nice way to explain and good work but what should i do if i my traffic goes down, i mean google is not redirecting my blog, first they ask then confirm.
Would my followers (through blogger) and anyone who has subscribed to my feed (through feedburner) remain if I moved over to using my own domain name?
For two weeks now I have been trying to get my domain connected to my blog. I went to many sites and became unsuccessful. I stumble across this one and FINALLY success! Thank you very much!
wow! thanks a lot Dave! I succeeded on finally having Blogger on my own domain.
its here;
http://www.cybershuttercarlo.co.cc
Thank you very much! I’ll link your site for those who are like me who are at a lost when it comes to domains. ^__^
More power!
Publishing Via FTP is a headache if we are posting regularly .. I prefer just to redirect my blog to my custom domain rather than uploading all stuff via FTP ..Anyways well explained dave!!
Hi there,
im stuck on the first step my blogger doesnt have
Switch to; FTP or SFTP
Hi Dave, recently buy a domain and gives me 404, when put http://housepartylights.net this direction is the blog, if put this direction http: / / http://www.housepartylights.net gives a mistake, I need des a hand in this, I have done something wrong … I need to set something in dsn or something well. thank
hi my name is tameem. and i have a blog named karbonet.blogspot.com and i have bought a domain http://www.karbonet.com and i create cname “ghs.google.com”
but after 2 days when i entered http://www.karbonet.com on my browser another page displayed. it says “this is a temporary Parking page of Karbonet.com please change the name server.”
but blogspot says no need to change the name server.
so what should i do.
how can i use the custom domain. and what should i put on the name server field for my blog.
please help me with that.
Sorry, link didn’t publish, see http://www.consumingexperience.com/2008/02/blogger-how-to-use-www-custom-domain.html
In case it helps anyone with Blogger’s custom domains (where your blog is hosted with Blogger / Blogspot) under your own domain name rather than using FTP, there’s a step by step with screenshots on Blogger custom domains, including the www problem.
FIGURED IT OUT. If anyone else sees that it’s probably because I didn’t have any posts! lol
Thanks or the GREAT info. this is incredible…
I get an “Index of /” page when I load the site now… Any suggestions…
[DIR] Parent Directory 03-Jan-2007 13:57 –
[ ] install00.php 20-May-2007 15:52 1k
[ ] install01.php 20-May-2007 15:52 1k
[ ] install02.php 20-May-2007 15:52 2k
[ ] install03.php 20-May-2007 15:53 1k
[ ] install03_cgi.php 20-May-2007 15:53 2k
There is no need to enable FTP for this, is a totally separate thing. All you have to do is to tell, on Settings, that you want to use a custom domain. The FTP comes as a plus, if you want to use your own server but Blogger offers free parking for those custom domains.
However, the 404 error that some reader mentioned here is real and I receive it too. Seems to be related to “web pages” service that we should disable for 24 hours…only that I have no idea where to find this service and I am getting a strange error when validating/activating the custom domain and Google support is…somehow missing.
thank you dave
it’s clear
Hi
I have just switched my blog (google blogger) to my own domain. The example shown above is probably from the old blogger. On the new blogger the process is nearly the same, just a bit more user friendly. They also have a link to a page that gives you exact, detailed instructions. Works like a charm!
In reply to Brian’s question:
‘2) If something goes wrong, is everything still intact at the blogspot.com URL?’
There is a function at the top of the publishing settings screen where you can upload and download your blog for backup purposes.
Dave,
If I use my custom domain with a Blogger account, will it affect my Page Rank after I configure my account? Appreciate your reply.
Im using the other option (my own domain, instead of FTP). My domain name is http://jessemonggo.com, which I registered through domainsite.com. If I go to http://jessemonggo.com, it works. But if I add www before jessemonggo.com, I get a 404 error. What could be the problem?
In my DNS setting, I have:
CNAME jessemonggo.com – ghs.google.com
CNAME http://www.jessemonggo.com – ghs.google.com
CNAME *.jessemonggo.com – ghs.google.com
Help?
Thanks Dave for custom domain with FTP, I have tried with new custom domain feature with blogger without FTP(http://www.bitzing.com/2007/02/custom-domain-issue-with-blogger-is-now.html), I am now trying this one.
I cannot create an account google will not let me,password rejected.Why?
Very easy to understand, esp with the screenshots…thanks…regards to all,Gopal
Wow… great and easy guide.
Thanks a lot.
I just graduated from college and bought a domain to move my website off onto. I figured while I was at it I should see if I could move my blog as well so everything is in one place. Thanks for the instructions – I think I’m going to give it a whirl. But I have a couple questions:
1) When you do this does it move your entire blog, i.e. all archived posts, back to the beginning?
2) If something goes wrong, is everything still intact at the blogspot.com URL?
Hi! I do have a similar problem. Do these steps apply to subdomains too? Im trying to publish a Blogger blog into my subdomain but I cant seem to make the entries appear on the subdomain. Instead of the entires appearing, these tags appear instead:
# posted by @ > comments links to this post
and so on…
—-
what could I be doing wrong? Hope you can help me. Thanks so much!
hi — thanks for the tip. everything worked, except for moving the archives over. the archive links don’t work. did i do something wrong here?
Great tip dave! i transfered my test blog on my new domain for experiment purpose only, i never thought that was so easy. thanks!
Thank you for this article, Dave (and Sarah). I have had a Blogger blog for a couple months now, but I wanted to experiment with WordPress, maybe. I didn’t want people to have to be redirected to a new URL. Buying my own domain and being able to put my blog right into it, so easily, solves that problem.
Every time I learn one of these new blogging tricks, I feel more in control! This is great!
Hello. I have a blog in blogger.com. And I also have a domain name delinares.com. I’ve set up my domain to create a DNS entry, recetas.delinares.com to recetasparatodos.blogspot.com, but if you try to access to recetas.delinares.com I’ve got a 404 error . Can you help me?
Thaks
Dave,
Great tip.
It took me some time to find out how to do this. I guess I should have written YOU and gotten the answer sooner. Anyway I had to wade through a lot of help files to find this information for my self.
Keep up the good work Dave,
A loyal reader
Frank Woodman Jr
awesome – i now have my blog on my server – thank you!!! hopefully it works better this way for seo – id imagine it would…
thanks for your advice!
ben