Why Buy A Domain? Choosing, And Custom Domain With Blogger

Advantages and disadvantages of having a domain name It is possible to have a domain name for your free Blogger account. That way, you can have as url something like "www.myblog.com" instead of "myblog.blogspot.com". Advantages of having a domain: You'll never loose the links you gain if you move your blog to another service. You'll never loose the Technorati links, Alexa rank, Google's PageRank, or any points or links that you gain from now on. Google will index your website better if you have a domain name. If your site becomes very famous, you can even sell your domain name. The disadvantages of having a domain name are: It costs some money. It forces you to choose a topic for your blog. It's not good to buy a domain name without thinking it very much, because it's a decision that last for at least one year. It takes you freedom to change your site in a radical way. If your blog is a hobby or just for fun, don't loose your time buying a domain. The best is to start with a free service, and when you see if your aims are real or not, buy a service. But changing from "blogspot" to your domain name will have these consequences: Loosing your actual PageRank. Loosing your Alexa Rank. Loosing many of your points in social sites. Your links from other sites will work, but they will not score for the new domain. These are problems that WordPress blogs don't have, as they can use a redirection (a "301 redirect"). Some people say you can, but it has the problem that you may by considered spammer by Google. It only works well for a site that is external to Blogger. Others say Blogger already does that, and after a time you will see the same PageRank, but it's not clear at all. These disadvantages don't have a solution, but can be minimized if you do some things that I will explain in another post. What to do? You may want to purchase your domain name if: Your will is to maintain your site online in the long term. You have a clear notion of what is your site all about. You are going to make blogging or webmastering a part of your professional life. If it's like this, don't wait to loose PR, Alexa Rank or external links that maybe later will be difficult to regain. If not, take some time to decide the aims of your blog. What do you need to have a domain name? For having a domain name you need this: A domain name provider. This is a company that registers the domain as your property. A DNS provider. This is a company that sends the visitors to you. You must try to get both things. A domain name registrar uses to do both things. When choosing one, you have to do this: See if it has good opinions of users. See if their price for each renewal is the same through years. See if it provides domain name, and DNS services INCLUDED. Value the time that the company has been online. After doing this with many services, I recommend 2 providers: NameBargain and NameCheap. Finally, I have purchased my domain from NameCheap for these reasons: It has good customer service. And when people have some problem, they fix them soon. They have a forum and support center for solving problems. They have good opinions from users. They are the second brand of eNom, which is an more expensive and well-known brand. They give the same quality for less money, as they are the same reliable brand. They give you free email forwarding. It is: you can choose 8 fake email names per domain, like this: "theNameYouChoose@yourdomain.com". You can protect your domain name to be stolen by another registrar (registrar lock). You can pay by Paypal. This is, to pay secure and easy. To buy a domain name Step by step: 1) Go to NameCheap: http://www.namecheap.com/ On the right side click a link in a login box that says: "Signup for a Free Account". 2) Click it. 3) Fill in your real data. 4) You'll be sent to your control panel. Now, if you want to pay by Paypal, you must click the link that is in red in this pick: 5) Click here, and you go to Paypal. Add funds to your account. Think in adding what you need. Each year costs 9.29 dollars. Multiply by the years you want to pay in advance, or just pay a year. 6) After you have the money added, go to "Register a Domain" in the upper blue bar. 7) Fill in the name and the extensions you would like to choose. Proceed. 8) You choose marking the case of the domain you want to purchase, and click "Add to chart". 9) After that, you'll be taken to a series of screens that allow you to insert your data for property, billing, etc. and pay with the founds you added to Paypal. 10) They will send you an email with a copy of the purchase contract. Now you are the proud owner of your domain!!! How to link the domain name with Blogger Now, go to your browser, and type the url of your domain name (www.yourdomain.com). If you see a page that NameCheap has used to host your domain until you link it to your site, it's that you can proceed. If not, wait 24-48 hours. In my case, it happened almost instantly. 1) Go to NameCheap and login. Your control panel appears, and you click here: 2) Click your domain name. 3) Look on the left and click this: 4) Enter ghs.google.com in www and @ and select CNAME(Alias) in both options. 5) Leave the sub-domains in blank, and select this to have emails named as your domain for free. Click the blue button of "Save Changes". 6) Go to your Blogger blog control panel. Enter the Settings. Click "Publishing". 7) Click on "Custom Domain". 8) A bit below, to the right, you have this. Click it. 9) Then appears a box to enter your domain. It is important that you enter it with the www. And click "Save Settings". 10) After the page reloads, go where you wrote the domain name and check the case: After all this, you will have to wait some time until it goes all perfect. For me it was 2 days. You may have these problems: Your blog shows a 404 error all times, or sometimes. Your blog shows that error when you try to enter from your domain.com (without the www). Your blog takes more time than normal to start loading. Don't worry for this and just wait. After 48 hours (or less) it may be better, and after some days it will not happen, if you did all well. It's normal, because the domain name is being notified to all the DNS servers in the world. The same may happen to your email forwarding. It can take some days to work well. After this, your blog may be reached from: the old url, www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com (without www) . Congratulations!!! What's next? You will notice that, if you have the widget to vote on Digg, it shows zero points. This is because your new url for those posts is not the same as before buying the domain. To avoid this post becoming too long, in some days I will publish another post explaining this: How to do a script to show the old points in the old posts, and the new ones in the new posts. How to minimize the time for regaining your Alexa rank. How to minimize the impact of this change in your social sites. I hope all this will be valuable for you. Good luck with your domain!!! -Emma Alvarez- © 2008 by Emma Alvarez. Link to this post without copying the text. Some Related Posts: If you liked this post, subscribe to Emma Alvarez Site or give yourself a gift Stumble it! Add me to your del.icio.us network