How to Link your Blog To A custom Domain (With Photos)

Having a custom domain to your blog makes it look more professional,lets people know you take your blogging serious.Imagine someone trying to memorize your URL as e.g myblogdomain.blogspot.com .Thats very long and anyone who mistakenly does not input .blogspot.com wont find your blog.

There are also rumors that Adsense do not approve blogs having the free blogspot domain. your custom domain can end with .com,.im,.com.ng,.co.zae.t.c depending on your choice

In this post,Ill explain how to set up a custom Domain using Godaddy

You can use the same method for any other Domain hosting platform of your choice though.

HOW TO SET UP A CUSTOM DOMAIN

1) Firstly,go to the website of your Domain Hosting Platform of your choice e.gGodaddy e.t.c.

2) You need to then Sign up for an account.

3) A confirmation mail would be sent to the E-mail used for the sign up,you need to confirm the account.

4) Then go back to the website and sign In.

5) Then search for the Domain of your choice e.g myblogdomain.com, Do not Include www. 

6) If the domain name is still available,You would be notified and can Proceed to Payment. You can pay with your debit card.(Visa,Mastercard,verve)e.t.c

I bought a custom 2years domain last week for someone and it costs about $18.34...see the screenshot below

When you successfully buy the domain,you have to go to your E-mail and confirm it,for it to be active

7) After that,go to your blogger dashboard >> Settings >> Basic >> Publishing.

8) When putting your Domain in the photo above,ensure you add www. e.gwww.myblogdomain.com

 

Remember to tick the Redirect box.

9) You would get an error message saying "We have not been able to verify your authority to this domain. Error 12".You need to verify your ownership of the domain before you can link it to your blog.

10) To verify your authority,you need to put some codes in your domain DNS

11) Go back to godaddy or any other platform you're using.

12) Sign it and click on Domain You own

13) On Godaddy, You would see a Gear icon on the Domain,Click on it and a drop down list shall appear,Click on DNS Managaement on the Drop Down List.

14) in the DNS Management section,We are looking for CNAMEs Try and locate it.

15) You need to Edit it and Input two codes.
     where you see  Name, Label or Host field, put www 
Where you see point to, or destination  put ghs.google.com

You would need to put another code after these,but this second code is Unique to your scecific blog alone, so put it the same way you put it for the first codes.

After that,you save the Settings.

Then return to your blogger dashboard and try to save it again and it would be successful without any error.

If you still see the same error,try the above process again,this time carefully.

Congratulations, you have successfully linked your Blog to a custom Domain

But the work isn't finished yet.

You need to find the A(Records) in the DNS Management. 

and input the following codes which links your naked domain (example.com) to an actual site (www.example.com). If you skip this step, visitors who leave off the "www" will see an error page.

where you see points to, put the @ symbol     (VERY IMPORTANT)

where you see host to, put these codes each for 4 different records.

216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21 
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21

You need to create four different A records each for them.

 Note: You pay annually for your custom domain so the price varies depending on the number of years you're paying for. 

Hope you found this post helpful.If yes drop your views,questions and comments below