From the category archives:

Domain Mapping

Domain mapping now active

March 5, 2005

Finally, it all works!

Domain mapping is now active for my blogs (and photo albums):

The underlying TypePad addresses that you may have in your blogroll or favorites still work. Any links to specific posts in my blogs that use those addresses will also still work and reach those pages. The RSS feed will continue to work as it is, as well as those feeds via services like Feedburner and NewsGator.

So you don’t really need to change anything if you prefer not to.

It was a painful two-week journey to get here. And, as I learned, the various difficulties I had were all of my own making and related to an incorrect setting I’d made in the DNS entries at my domain host, GoDaddy.

If it hadn’t been for that error, this whole switchover would have been wholly painless and as simple and straightforward as following TypePad’s domain mapping help. Special thanks to Melissa at TypePad Support for helping me finally get here.

So what did I do wrong? Well, it was a simple error but with terminal consequences.

In GoDaddy’s DNS manager settings, I had set the alias in one of the CNAME entries like this:

What the alias should have been was this:

As Melissa explained it to me:

Alias: Weblog
Points to: nevon.typepad.com

That will point to:
weblog.nevon.net

Typically we recommend people point the Alias to www.

Seeing the explanation that simple way made it easier to understand what this CNAME setting means. So I deleted the incorrect alias and edited the setting to be ‘www.’

Waited 24 hours for the DNS to take into account the change and then tried it today. Voila!

The other good news is that I don’t need to change anything either in how ecto or BlogJet - the offline editing apps I use - connect to my blogs. The existing settings still work, so nothing to change or re-configure there.

It all could have been such a painless experience ;)

Domain mapping still doesn’t work properly

February 26, 2005

Ready, set… Still no go.

Activating domain mapping so that the addresses of both my blogs and my photo albums display as www.nevon.net/[name of blog or album] still doesn’t produce the desired result.

I’ve followed all the instructions as per TypePad’s domain mapping configuration guide, from changing the required DNS settings at my host, GoDaddy, to setting things up at the TypePad end and then activating the mapping. I’ve had correspondence during the past week with GoDaddy’s support team and with TypePad support. Everything should be fine.

But it still doesn’t work properly.

Ss26feb_nevonexpAs the screenshot on the left shows (click for larger view), the mapping looks like it works, but the appearance of the blog is a complete mess. It looks as though the stylesheet isn’t being applied. I activated domain mapping a few days ago on my main blog with the same result. Rather than risk another mess on my main blog, I decided to try it just on this blog in case it didn’t work. And it didn’t.

According to the TypePad help pages, this situation re the stylesheet not taking occurs when the stylesheet is not found because the domain isn’t ready to be set as active.

Yet both TypePad and GoDaddy say it should work correctly by now - I did all the initial setup a week ago, plenty of time for DNS records everywhere to be updated. Both say they can see my blogs if they type in the new domain address.

The thing is, though, I would expect that anyway because I had set up domain forwarding some weeks ago. So if you type www.nevon.net/experimental/, for instance, you will get to this blog.

I wonder whether disabling domain forwarding at the GoDaddy end might make any difference (GoDaddy support say it shouldn’t).

Anyway, back to both supports for more help. If anyone else has any suggestions, I’d really appreciate hearing them!

Edit: Curious. If you click the link above, to this blog, what you get is the main blog. Why would that be? Something in the DNS? Yep, back to support…

Edit 27-Feb: More curious. That link now works properly, but the URL in the browser address bar shows two forward slashes together, as in "http://nevon.typepad.com//experimental/".

What’s changed? Well, at the suggestion of TypePad support yesterday, I disabled domain masking (which was enabled) at GoDaddy. Other than that, nothing else.

Unexpected results with domain change

February 22, 2005

Well, I thought all was ready to go with the change over to my new domain for the blogs and photo albums I have on TypePad.

Not so - unexpected results.

I’d made all the changes needed re DNS at GoDaddy, my domain host. After some email correspondence with their extremely helpful support team, all looked set to switch over to the new domain, mapped so that my TypePad sub domain would show as www.nevon.net/[blog or photo album name].

So I made the change late this afternoon by activating the setup in TypePad I’d already prepared as per the domain mapping instructions and republished only my main blog (just in case…) to see how it all worked.

A bit of a mess, actually! The blog appeared when you go to the new domain address, showing the new domain, but the layout and appearance were a complete disaster. It looked like the change had somehow knocked out the style sheet, so what you saw was a site reminiscent of what websites looked like in the mid 90s, just as the web got going.

I quickly reverted back to how it all was before, a process that took about 10 minutes. Then, a quick support ticket email to the always-helpful Melissa at TypePad support.

Stay tuned…

New URL coming

February 20, 2005

Within the next few days, all blogs and photo albums in this TypePad subdomain (nevon.typepad.com) will reflect my new domain address (www.nevon.net).

Using a procedure called domain mapping, I’ve set up the TypePad domain so that it will show all content as my domain. While www.nevon.net already forwards to the current TypePad subdomain, domain mapping means that all content for all blogs, etc, within the TypePad subdomain will display addresses (permalinks, etc) with my own domain rather than TypePad’s.

I’ve also set up DNS management at my domain host (GoDaddy - fantastic service), a procedure that was very straightforward. All I need to wait for now is for the DNS changes to take effect, which will take anything up to 48 hours. Then, switch on the change at TypePad and it then happens. So I expect the target to change will be this Wednesday, maybe earlier.

The change won’t affect anyone’s bookmarks or favorites: typing in the current TypePad address - either for a blog address or for any individual post within a blog or photo album - will simply re-direct it to the new address.

Once I’ve enabled the change, I’ll post information on my main blog.