Google Custom Domain - Case Study #2

I've been working with Google Custom Domains for several weeks now, first on other peoples domains, then some on my own, and finally on more of other people. In very few cases can someone get a custom domain to work completely.

We'll take my church blog as an example here, as we did with Case Study #1. This blog has 4 aliases.

1. http://martinezumc.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.martinezumc.blogspot.com/
3. http://martinezumc.org/
4. http://www.martinezumc.org/

Current DNS settings


Simply one "CNAME" pointing to "ghs.google.com". No "A" record, as discussed in Google Custom Domain - The DNS Referral.

Let's test what we have now.

C:\>ping martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=124ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=123ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=143ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 123ms, Maximum = 143ms, Average = 129ms

C:\>ping www.martinezumc.org

Pinging ghs.l.google.com [66.249.81.121] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=124ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=244
Reply from 66.249.81.121: bytes=32 time=122ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 66.249.81.121:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 122ms, Maximum = 126ms, Average = 124ms

Both "martinezumc.org" and "www.martinezumc.org", verified by pinging, pointing to "ghs.google.com".


I can publish to martinezumc .org with no problem




I cannot publish to www. martinezumc .org.


And once again, the infamous

Another blog is already hosted at this address

And here, for reference, is a DNS Report for martinezumc.org.

(Edit 2/7): Blogger Employee promises us

We're working on a fix for the current problem some users experience when switching between custom domains and Blog*Spot.

(Edit 2/12): Blogger Employee understands the frustration.

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Monolithic Errors #2

Setting up a blog, published to a Google Custom Domain, is a two step process.

1. You setup DNS pointing to the Custom Domain server "ghs.google.com".
2. You publish your blog to the custom domain.

And some folks have been able to do just that.

But many others can't. And we all get one error, consistently.

Another blog is already hosted at this address.

What does this error mean? I suspect that Blogger is validating the DNS pointer, before setting up the relationship between the Blog*Spot blog (which is what we currently have) and the Custom Domain. And, if the DNS doesn't point to "ghs.google.com", then the custom domain must be in use somewhere else.

An alternate possibility is that there is a pointer somewhere in the Blog*Spot blog that points somewhere already. Or maybe the Blog*Spot blog can't be found.

Either way, Blogger needs to fix this problem. At least, add a few "bx-" codes, to let us know what the hell is going on, and so we can enumerate the problem in the forums.

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The Trinity, and Your Web Site

The power and majesty of the trinity has been a part of mankind for years, before the Internet. From religion (the Christian nature of the supreme being - The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost), to properly robust systems, using triple redundancy (as in Robert Heinlein's science fiction - "I tell you three times that this is so"), the number three has always had almost mystical significance.

And with your web site, there is a trinity too. You are using, and may be paying (directly or indirectly) for 3 different services.

1. Registration.
2. DNS Hosting.
3. Content Hosting.

If you have a domain purchased thru GoDaddy, and hosted on their services (maybe a blog published using FTP), you may have a package deal, with all 3 services on one yearly bill. Or you could purchase (register) your domain from any of dozens of registrars, have DNS provided by another company, and host your web site on a third, like Blogger. That's your choice, based upon your needs.

All Internet service companies don't provide all 3 services. GoDaddy does. Blogger / Google provides only content hosting, if you publish your blog to a Google Custom Domain.

You can register domain names from any of a number of different registrars, and you can use .com, .org, .net or any other valid addresses. Remember: you only need to get the domain name; you don't have to pay extra for hosting service.

Registration
When you purchase your domain, you want to know beforehand that nobody is already using it. And you want to ensure that, in the future, nobody uses it. You pay for the uniqueness of your domain name.

DNS Hosting
When you pay for DNS (directory listing), you want to know that your domain can always be located. Redundant DNS servers, geographically separated, is important for high visibility web sites. You pay for the address listing of your domain name.

Now this little detail may not be important to you.

Chuck, this doesn't matter to me. I pay my ISP for service, and they tell me to configure "ns1.myisp.com" and "ns2.myisp.com" (or their IP addresses) as my DNS servers. Why do I care about whatever DNS server Google uses?

Well, I'll ask you to think about this. You use your ISPs DNS servers so you can access websites. You pay for DNS hosting so your readers can access your website. Both your ISPs DNS servers, and your readers ISPs DNS servers, have to ask your DNS host for the address of your website.

You write your blog for your readers. Your readers DNS servers have to find out the address of your web site. How many repeat readers do you expect to have, if they try to access your web site and see

404 Server Not Available

or a similar error?

Content Hosting
When you pay for Content Hosting, you want to know that your web site itself will always be online. Whereas a DNS retrieval is a small (but significant) amount of traffic, and of server space, your blog (web site), as it grows, will use increasingly larger amounts of server space, and generate increasingly larger amounts of traffic. Your content host needs a large and reliable connection to the Internet, as well as reliable server hardware. You pay for the hosting of the web site itself.

If you have a blog hosted on Blog*Spot, you pay nothing at all. If you have a blog hosted on a Google Custom Domain, you pay nothing for the Content Hosting, just for registration and DNS.

The latter 2 services are generally billed yearly, and at a fixed rate. Content Hosting is generally billed by the month, and will be tiered based upon the amount of storage required (size of blog), amount of bandwidth generated (number of readers * size), and various server services required.

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Now, It's Gone For Good

The invitation, that is.

There's no invitation here.


I had to update an article in The Real Blogger Status (Classic), but I had just restarted my computer. Upon starting, I went to login to my dashboard, and that is what I saw.

No warning.

Just as I predicted, not so long ago (but didn't really believe would be this soon).

OK, I got it done. Some warning would have been polite, but accusing Blogger of being polite is never necessary.

So now, I have to update all of my newly migrated blogs with the shiny New Blogger template features, when I'm not busy helping with the stampede, that is.

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Editing The Template In A New Blogger Blog

The template in a New Blogger blog, when published to Blog*Spot (or to a Google Custom Domain) is written in XML, not HTML. A lot of HTML based tweaks won't work in New Blogger.

If you force HTML into your template, you may end up with one of the new, cryptic error codes

bX-lgwej

This says that your post template contains invalid HTML.

Are you seeing this error? If so, don't despair.

• Revert the template back to Classic, so your readers can access the blog.
• Build a test version of the blog, and work on a New Blogger template, while your readers are accessing the production blog.
• Take your HTML based template tweaks, that made your Classic blogs unique, and add them as HTML / JavaScript page elements. Test everything, carefully, in all available browsers.
• When you have a New Blogger template for your blog, looking as you like it, Save the template to a known location.
• Migrate your production blog to a New Blogger template again.
• Restore the saved template, developed above, to your production blog.

XML is not as user friendly as HTML was. But 90% of the HTML based tweaks can probably be copied into HTML page elements in the GUI Page Elements section of the Template. Forget about raw XML, and use Page Elements.

XML is not as forgiving as HTML. You may have to learn some discipline, when coding New Blogger template entries, and even posts.

Most HTML tags, like the Anchor tag, come in pairs.

<a href="http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/editing-template-in-new-blogger-blog.html">
http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/
2007/01/editing-template-in-new-blogger-blog.html</a>

is an anchor link to this article. Notice the

<a...> ... </a>

pair.

Some HTML tags, like the Break tag, don't come in pairs.

<br>

is a tag that I use a lot. There is no sequence

<br> ... </br>

A Break tag, in strict HTML, is better written as

<br />

The requirements of strict HTML you will probably have to learn from experience. An Object tag can't be written as the Break tag is written.

<object />

isn't valid. Nor is a simple

<object ... >

Here's how I got an embedded video object to work, in my Miscellaneous Musings post More Bumper Cars

<span style="text-align: center; display: block;"><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/z9tKWzxSZ5E"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/z9tKWzxSZ5E" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" height="350" width="425"></embed></object></span>

Note the Embed and Param tags, too. The Param didn't require pairing. The Object and Embed tags did - you'll get errors when publishing with them unpaired. I got an error when I tried publishing Object as

<object ... />

The only solution was to publish it as

<object ... > ... </object>

Apparently all tags aren't as versatile in formatting as the meta tag is. Life isn't fair, nor is strict HTML easy. Deal with it.

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