Google Custom Domains isn't working for me

OK, this switching over domain names didn't work out the way I planned.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to use Blogger's new Custom Domains option to switch the domain name of this blog from "www.thedailyupload.blogspot.com" to "www.thedailyupload.com".

At first things seemed to be working all right. But then a few issues showed up.

First, you could find the blog at "www.thedailyupload.com", but not at just "thedailyupload.com" without the "www".

That's important for me because sites like Technorati use the no-WWW listing to point to blogs when they refer to them.

Plus, I'm finding that more and more people are getting used to the idea that they can drop the "www" when looking up a site, since most browsers seem to accept either form.

Then another issue showed up. Several subscribers wrote to me to say that my blog had disappeared from their screens -- literally. When they typed in any of the URL's, all they got was a blank screen! What the heck was happening???

At first, I thought it was a DNS problem. Since I could see the changes, but others couldn't, that seemed like it might be the case. But then I checked for my blog using Internet Explorer -- and nothing.

Eventually, I figured out that my blog template had been changed slightly, and while Firefox still worked, anyone using Internet Explorer wasn't able to see the blog.

I fixed that problem, but now I am so frustrated by all of this that I've switched back to using the "blogspot" servers. So I'm back to using "thedailyupload.blogspot.com" with or without the "www".

But I haven't entirely given up. Since I still own the domain "thedailyupload.com" I've set it up to forward to this blog. So...once the DNS propogates across the Internet in the next day or so, if you enter "thedailyupload.com" with or without the "www", you should end up at my blog.

We'll see. I'll keep you posted...

UPDATE -Feb 4/07 -- I'm still trying to figure out how to make this work. The problem now is Google's servers are somehow keeping control of the DNS registration, despite all my attempts to remove their references. Weird. GoDaddy is working on it. But so far, my goal of gaining control of the domain is still being thwarted. But I will prevail!

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