Monday, July 11, 2011

Finally....My Own Domain Name

The smiley face you see above, is how I felt when I looked at my browser yesterday afternoon and finally saw my own domain name.

I stood up like I was at a Pentecostal revival and shouted……HALLELUJAH!

However, it didn’t come without aggravation and a certain amount of tenacity.

I love how Blogger tells you that setting up a custom domain through them is as easy as…1-2-3.

It’s more like….1-2-3.…and then spending the next TWO HOURS trying to figure out why your new domain name is not showing up; eventually discovering that it’s because they left out some very important information concerning the setup.

Easy? Yeah. About as easy as having a testicle examination with cold hands.

I’m so glad I had done a lot of online research before I took the plunge because it truly helped. Not only did I research the positive experiences other people had with changing over to a custom domain, but also the negative. And it was through the negative experiences I read about, which helped me find a solution to the problem I had. In fact, the same thing that happened to me happened to many other people when they set up their domain name through Blogger, so I was somewhat familiar with the issue. Therefore, I would like to give a HUGE thank you to all those bloggers out there who helped me find a solution through their own custom domain experiences via the Blogger forum.

I would also like to thank the people over at Go Daddy, who patiently guided me through the darkness in getting things properly set up. Blogger uses Go Daddy as one of their domain sellers, but I did not purchase the name directly from them. So, I think it was awesome they took the time to help me with a problem which had nothing to do concerning their end. Honestly, it was some of the best customer service I’ve ever experienced.

THANK YOU, GO DADDY!

I won’t use this post to try and explain what happened when I set up my domain name because it’s too long and technical. However, I will tell you that it had to do with the Google apps feature which Blogger includes with a custom domain. My biggest complaint is that Blogger needs to be WAY more thorough in explaining how to set up a domain name through them.

But I will say, that once the setup was fixed and completed, the actual domain name transference was immediate. I realize it will take some time for the full transition to occur, however I googled some of my archive posts and when I clicked on my old URL, it redirected me to my new address.

My old blogspot.com address is still working, but I would like to suggest to anyone who may have my blog in their browsers, to change the URL because eventually that old domain will be finito.

And as far as my blog feed goes, if you’re using Google Reader it will/should continue to update my posts as usual. It should also do the same thing if you’re using my Feedburner feed, because Google owns them.

If any of you ladies and gents experience issues with my new domain, or have problems with my feed updating, please don’t hesitate to contact me through email. I would really appreciate it.

Also, if any of you have tips or advice on something I should do that I may have forgotten about, please let me know in your comments. Thank you so much for your help and support during these recent changes on Vent.

Anyhoo….after four and a half years, I FINALLY have my own domain name.

P.S. You’ll notice that when you click on the comment link, I finally discovered a way to widen the comment box. Hope you enjoy it!