Custom Domain Usage On Blogger Through Dreamhost

Blogger offers users the option to purchase their Custom Domain through Google's partnership with GoDaddy in order to use their domain service with Blogger's blogs. Doing so, there's no manual changes that you have to make yourself. It's automatically set up for you.



And that's great. But I may want to use that domain for something other than a Blogger blog someday and I happen to get a little overwhelmed with GoDaddy's (sometimes) confusing administration areas. So I try to steer clear of them as much as possible for anything custom.

I noticed that there wasn't a clear description on how to use custom domains on Blogger blogs if you purchased your domain through Dreamhost. Dreamhost's customer support wiki, which in the past was not written for the general user (full of technical jargon), may have the solution. But I haven't checked the wiki in a LONG time. So I decided to give you some tips here.

1. When you purchase a domain through Dreamhost, you are allowed to switch the hosting of that domain at any time. Out of several choices you can choose to host the domain at Dreamhost or on Google. When you want your domain to be used on your Blogger blog, choose "host on Google." This makes a necessary DNS (Domain Name System) change in your Dreamhost setup that you can't otherwise edit manually. This is Dreamhost's way of following Blogger Custom Domain Instructions (the first dot under Update The DNS).

2. If you don't want Google Apps, choose "DNS Only." Wait a few minutes and then update the DNS on the domain using the Blogger Custom Domain Instructions. Confirm that your entries are error-free. You should have 4 new A name records for the 4 new IP Addresses (value) on a naked domain (no "www" in the name field). And you should also have one CNAME record for the ghs.google.com on the subdomain version of the domain (add "www" in the name field).

3. It may take up to 48 hours for your DNS to properly propogate throughout the internet. After which, log into your Blogger blog's admin. Click Settings > Publishing > Click the link to add your custom domain. Fill in the appropriate field with the subdomain version of your web address. If everything goes properly, this should be enough.

There have been one instance where this hasn't worked for me. That's because the domain was used was previously on Google Apps and I believe that there is some conflict between the DNS and Google Apps. So for the most part I've elected to not have Google Apps. Primarily because contacting / receiving tech support for issues from my DNS is a non-issue. Totally different issue when it comes to Google.

Google create more services and bring their magic into consumer products, I wonder, what will they do about customer support.