What they didn't know is what would happen to internal links. Has anyone done this, and if so, do you know if the internal links will transfer as well as external incoming links.
This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.
Friday, January 26, 2007
(Blogger) Using own domain name with new blogger
Someone told me that once you have switched to new blogger they are now offering hosting on your own url, for free, no FTP, and that it's very easy to do. The person I heard this from said that your old blogspot address is eliminated and all the links automatically transfer over.
What they didn't know is what would happen to internal links. Has anyone done this, and if so, do you know if the internal links will transfer as well as external incoming links.
This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.
What they didn't know is what would happen to internal links. Has anyone done this, and if so, do you know if the internal links will transfer as well as external incoming links.
This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.
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17 comments:
By all accounts the internal links are fine - the only issue involves pictures that are greater than 400px they won't move across - but that is all explained in bloggers help files.
It's very new, and I wouldn't suggest taking the leap yet. I know of one Blogger who did, and it ended up not working, so she switched back until they could work out the kinks.
Cate, I had heard that once you switch your blogspot blog goes away and you can't switch back?
The person I heard about was able to switch to hosting her own domain and everything worked perfectly. Within a week the new domain showed up on google with the same page rank and search results as the blogspot address had before.
The only reason I am worried about internal links is because this person did not have any, so she could not say for sure what happened to them.
I read about this a little in blogger help, but I didn't find anything about internal links.
Personally, I'd be very wary of taking a domain name for free. I can't believe that Blogger would actually give me ownership of the domain. My fear would be that if there came a time when I wanted to do something else with that domain (which would naturally contain the name of my blog), Blogger would own all rights to it and I'd be forced to come up with another domain name. (I know this probably wouldn't be a problem for most people, but I'm very concerned with maintaining control/ownership of my blog and my websites.)
Susan, you still have to buy the domain name separately, blogger just hosts it for you. It is only the hosting that is free. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I would assume you can move that domain from blogger to anywhere else you wanted, just as you could before.
Hmmm, maybe we're talking about two different things. The *new* Blogger has a custom domain feature whereby if you own your own domain, you can change the DNS settings so that when people visit you, it won't show the blogspot address in the URL when it forwards over. Meaning, if people type in www.kalynskitchen.com, it forwards to your blogspot address, and they'll see the blogspot url in their browser. The custom domain enables your browser to continue to show your domain name. That's what I was referring to, and it wasn't a smooth process, but luckily could be undone fairly quickly.
Cate, yes I think that's something different. This replaces your blogspot address completely with yourcustomdomain.com. It's a one time thing and totally replaces the blogspot blog with the new domain. What makes it attractive is that the page rank and search results stay the same, at least according to the person I heard about it from.
ARghh. So many things to figure out.
I just switched over--it took 3 minutes (enough time for me to almost start hyperventilating) but everything seems to have gone fine. I was worried because my blog is privately hosted, and I hadn't really heard much from people in the same situation.
I see what you're talking about, Kalyn. It says, "The new version of Blogger now supports using a custom domain for serving your blog. If you already own a domain named, say, mysite.com and want your blog to be served at that address instead of at a blogspot.com address, we can host your blog on that domain for you — for free. Your old Blog*Spot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers."
It also says that one of the benefits is drag-and-drop template editing, which makes me wonder if I won't have that, being hosted privately and all.
Susan, from what I've read, you can either have drog and drop editing OR html template editing but not both. There is a lot to figure out.
If I currently have kalynskitchen.com pointing to kalynskitchen.blogspot.com
I wonder if I have to undo that before I could use the custom domain feature. I wish I understood this stuff more!
Susan, now I'm going to look at your blog so I can be reassured. It has helped me that some people like Cate, Haalo and others were brave enough to do it early. Thanks guys!
Kalyn, I probably won't even try to use the drag and drop; I'm an old html person, so I'll stick to that.
What's really cool is that now when you leave a message on my blog, I get an email that says "Kalyn has left a new comment on your post 'Quinoa Vegetable Paella'"--and your name is a link to your profile and the post name is a link to the post. No more hovering over the blog name to find out which post or going through the blog to find commenters' profiles. Hurray!
Do it, Kalyn! I bet everything will be fine. Just have a bag handy, in case of hyperventilation. :-)
Switching from old blogger to new is a two part process - first step just moves your blog unchanged from one to another. To get to the new features like labels you then need to take the next step which is customising the layout. Until then you can only use html to alter your template.
Once you go through the second step you can use both drop editing and html editing. I know since I've gone through that second step but there are a lot of things you need to be aware of.
For the custom domain issue this site might be interesting reading - it even has an example of a site that switched.
I just switched two small blogs and one larger one (about 600 posts) with no apparent trouble whatsoever. For the latter site, I had previously registered teaguyspeaks.com and had been forwarding it to the blogspot address.
After the switchover I decided to try the Custom Domain feature - with some small amount of trepidation. I'm relieved to say that it worked out great (so far). Internal links still show up using the old blogspot addresses, of course, but when they're clicked they resolve correctly to the new Custom Domain-based address.
As for what this does to traffic and whatnot, we'll see. Since my traffic took a big drop at the end of the year (Google page ranking change?), I figured I didn't have much more to lose by doing this.
I'm the blogger Cate's talking about! I switched ERR over to the custom domain and all the internal links changed just fine. I was also able to switch back to my blogspot address with no problems. Here's why I switched back to my blogspot one:
1. www.everythingrachael.com worked fine but everythingrachaelray.com did not. If showed a 404 error. With any other site, whether or not you type in the "www" shouldn't matter. I've seen this discussed in the blogger help group, so hopefully they will fix it.
2. If you typed in my old blogspot address with the www, it would forward to the custom domain. If you typed it in without it, it would not. So that seemed to defeat the purpose.
3. For the three days I used the custom domain (before I figured out 1 and 2 above) Technorati started counting links to www.everythingrachaelray.com and not crediting them to my blogspot address, which I have accumulated all my links at thus far. That worried me.
Overall, I will wait till the www v. no www bugs are fixed before I switch back.
Kalyn - if you change to a custom domain, you turn off the domain forwarding because it's just no longer necessary.
I have been keeping up on the developments through this blog.
If anyone has any questions, I spent FOREVER trying to figure this all out, so feel free to ask!
Madeline, thanks for the information. I really want to do that once they have the bugs worked out. I'll check with the person I know who's doing it and see if she's noticed any of these issues too. Please keep us posted here if you try it again. (And very good to hear that you could switch back when you decided you needed to!)
Me again. I just checked that site and hers worked fine WITHOUT putting in www, but if you put www you get a 404 error. Very strange. The opposite of what happened to you. I'm going to tell her about it now.
Thanks again Madeline for the heads up.
Kalyn - I switched over to the new Blogger AND am now using my own domain name. The process went very smoothly for me, since my blog is minuscule in size; I dont't think I had made internal links. Everything seems to have mad the switch jusf fine. The only glitch was that I had to cancel my domain registration with Dreamhost because and I wasn't able to provide the required DNS information to Blogger unless I upgraded to much more expensive service. All in all, Dreamhost was awful to deal with. I transferred my domain to GoDaddy, for a nominal (like 5 bucks) fee and it worked like a dream.
I'm getting the 404 error message when I try to use www.familystylefood.com, so I guess that's a glitch that will be ironed out sometime.
I love the new drag-and-drop template - it's completely idiot proof. Perfect for me!
You are welcome, Kalyn. I don't know why it put me as Anonymous! I'll let you know if I find the magic solution somehow.
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