Lessons learned with custom domains on Blogger.com

I'm back! My blog has been off line for the past few days as a result of the switch from rdhamilton.blogspot.com to blog.itslife.ca. It drove me crazy trying to figure out what the issue was. Every time one typed in blog.itslife.ca you were redirected to the Google search page.

This all started when I requested my hosting company, Bluehost, to setup a CNAME to Blogger.com. They setup (as I requested):

blog.itslife.ca --> rdhamilton.blogspot.com

As I researched the issue further, I found that the actual code should have been:

blog.itslife.ca. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
www.blog.itslife.ca. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

Once it was changed accordingly, I republished my blog from the Blogger
Dashboard by publishing it to blogspot and then back to custom domain
(under Settings -> Publishing). Please note that my custom website
returned a 404 error until I republished it.

For anyone that is looking for more information, I found the following
website very helpful:

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/11/schizophrenia-and-custom-domain-urls.html

I learned a few valuable lessons that I thought I would pass on:

1. Help in the Google Blogger Help Group is hit and miss. I never received a response to my request for help.

2. There appears to be no way to contact Blogger directly for help. (You receive what you pay for comes to mind).

3. Bluehost is absolutely wonderful and usually responds to my requests for help within an hour of receiving a support request. If you are looking for a web hosting company, I highly recommend them.

Until next time.
Richard