A Blog Published To A Custom Domain Has A New URL - And No More

We see occasional signs of naivete, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, about custom domain publishing.

Can I publish to a custom domain - and still use the Blogger dashboard?

and

Can I publish to a custom domain - and keep my comments and posts?

and

Can I publish to a custom domain - and avoid TOS restrictions?

Some blog owners seem to see custom domain publishing as more than it actually is.

When you publish your blog to a non BlogSpot URL (aka custom domain), using a proper setup, your blog now has a new URL.

The BlogSpot URL continues to work - and to direct search engines bots, search query results, and visitors, to the blog.

If your blog uses Google+ Comments, you won't see the comments published to the BlogSpot URL - although the comments will still exist, and be visible, in Google+.

Some accessory gadgets will stop working, temporarily, shortly after the new URL starts working. This is an unavoidable result of the Internet address lookup infrastructure, aka DNS.

Other than those details, you'll have the same blog as before - just with an extra URL, that may be more valuable to the search engines.

• The Blogger blog will still be hosted by Blogger / Google, and will use the Blogger dashboard for maintenance and publishing.
• The blog will be served subject to Auto Pagination.
• The blog will be subject to the same content restrictions - both porn labeling, and malware / spam deletion, will be consequences of any infractions.
• The blog will be subject to the same deletion recovery restrictions.

Just as any time you change the URL of your blog, you'll face changes in external relationships, such as with your readers, and with search engines and other services. Don't do this without careful planning, and methodical execution!

For the few times when your domain fails, see my troubleshooting check list - but prevent problems best, by first setting it up properly, and by observing your own limitations.

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New Custom Domains Purchased From A Registrar, And Lacking The Transition Period For New Domains

We've known about the Transition period, which has applied to domains purchased through Blogger, for a few years.

Under Transition, domains purchased using "Buy a Domain" were only partially published, immediately after the domain purchase - with the publishing process completed, several days later. The Transition period allowed for the domain, newly setup by "Buy a Domain", to become fully visible on the Internet, before blogs subject to Transition were re published.

The Transition period was originally applied to blogs re published using "Buy a Domain", to delay redirection of the BlogSpot URL to the domain URL, until after a new domain was fully visible, to all Internet DNS servers.

Transition was designed to apply to new domains, purchased using "Buy a Domain", with the hope that domains purchased outside "Buy a Domain" would not need Transition.

When "Buy a Domain" was active, most blogs being published to domains not just purchased using "Buy a Domain" did not require Transition.

• Blogs published to domains, purchased directly from a registrar, would be owned by people with experience setting up domains. People with experience would be able to cope better with the DNS Latency, and inherent instability, involved with new domains.
• Some blogs would be published to mature domains, which would not need Transition at all.

With the ending of the "Buy a Domain" feature, we now have every new domain owner, experienced and not, purchasing domains directly from registrars.

In many cases, Transition is not needed for newly purchased domains, when the owner is not experienced. Inexperienced domain owners make mistakes, when setting up their domains. The domain setup process creates its own limited length "Transition" period, for inexperienced domain owners.

Recently, some domain owners have reported a new symptom, when using the Publishing wizard, to publish their blogs to their newly purchased domains.

This operation failed. Try again later. If the problem persist, please file a post on the help forum.

This new symptom may be replacing the long dreaded "Another blog or Google Site is already using this address.".

Most domain owners, seeing "This operation failed.", have domains with bad DNS addresses. They are generally instructed

You need to correct your DNS addresses.

Those not instructed to correct their DNS addresses should probably be advised

Your DNS addresses are righteous. You now need to wait 24 to 48 hours, for the newly purchased domain to be visible, everywhere on the Internet.

The latter advice will be necessary, simply because the domain was properly setup, immediately - even with the domain not fully visible across the entire Internet.

What happens with gadgets, which need updating, is yet to be observed.

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After You Publish Your Blog To A Custom Domain, Should You Update Internal Links?

One interesting question, which comes up from time to time in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, is about Custom Domain Publishing - and what to do, after Transition completes.

Now that my blog is successfully transitioned to the domain URL, should I update the internal blog links, in the post contents?

This is a question that deserves some thought. From an aesthetic sense, it makes sense to do this - hoping that you will be paying for the domain, for eternity. But, is it worth the effort?

There are several issues, which may be relevant, when asking the question, phrased above.

Remember that updating the internal links is a manual effort - this has to be done on a post by post basis.

• How much time do you have to spend, updating the link URLs?
• How much effort will this take? How many old posts do you have, with how many internal links?
• How likely are you to go ever back to the BlogSpot URL?

Remember that one of the features of custom domain publishing is the DNS Based redirect, of the BlogSpot URL, to the domain published URL. This is an automatic feature, it's total and immediate - and it will continue to work, only as long as the domain continues to work.

As you continue to publish posts in your blog, your new internal links will use the domain URL - unless you manually convert each one, as you edit each post. If you ever opt to publish back to BlogSpot, all of the links, pointing to the domain URL, will be problems - when the domain stops redirecting. If you spend time manually updating each link now, that's the same amount of time that you'll have to spend reverting the updated links, when you publish back to BlogSpot.

Remember that your BlogSpot URL continues to operate, forever - regardless of the domain published URL.

From what I can tell of the DNS infrastructure used by custom domain published blogs, the domain DNS settings are cached locally, for all readers of any given custom domain. If the BlogSpot to domain redirect is similarly cached, it's unlikely that there are any reader experienced performance issues, from people reading blogs and clicking on BlogSpot targeted internal links, that redirect to custom domain URLs.

As far as I can tell, when thinking about this carefully, there is no real reason - other than esthetics - to ever update the BlogSpot based internal links, to directly point to the domain URL. Spend your time, after Transition has completed, profitably. Work on the blog, and get it re indexed, under the new URL.

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