Using your own blog domain with BlogSpot

Having just started this blog, I want to give it its own domain. I've registered skegging-it-out.net (and skeggingitout.net, just for completeness; I prefer the separated form), and now need to connect them up. In this post, I'll explain what I did, in the hope that it may be of some help to someone else.

I have actually done this process before, with my other BlogSpotted blog, STLSoft Musings, but, being a programmer and programming consultant, I have forgotten how. So, I'll do it again, and, in the spirit of Skegging It Out, will record it for posterity. Here goes:

1. Register your domain name, in this case skegging-it-out.net
2. Read the BlogSpot help on this subject
   
3. Add a CNAME record to the DNS settings for the domain. I like the blog to appear in the sub-domain blog, so this will be blog.skegging-it-out.net. So, specify blog.skegging-it-out.net (done via entering blog in the requisite field with my registrar), and enter ghs.google.com for the canonical name.
4. [OPTIONAL] If, like skegging-it-out.net, your domain is used solely for the blog, you will probably want www.skegging-it-out.net to come to BlogSpot. To do this, add another CNAME record named www again specifying ghs.google.com for the canonical name.
5. You'll want add URL forwarding from your registrar (to whom arbitrary accesses to your domain will go) to blog.skegging-it-out.net, using standard URL forwarding. (Don't use stealth forwarding, if that's available.)
6. Finally, you need to let BlogSpot know to start servicing requests for blog.skegging-it-out.net. From you blog's main page, click Customize, then Settings, then Publishing, then Custom Domain, then Switch to Advanced Settings, and enter your domain, in my case blog.skegging-it-out.net. Then save your settings, and cross your legs - because it takes time for the DNS settings and whatnot to propagate, you will likely find, as I have both times, that your blog will be unavailable for several hours. During this time, you will doubtless worry that you've not executed the previous steps correctly, and may even flip your blog settings back to skegging-it-out.blogspot.com a few times in your panic. If, after a day, you've not got a nicely hosted custom domain for your blog, you've made a mistake, and you're up the creek, and it's time to call a sysadmin.
   

I may have written that with the seeming authority of someone who understands it intimately. That's not an entirely accurate picture of reality. Nonetheless, it works for me. If you have any insights to add, please let me know. If it doesn't work for you, by all means let me know about that, after you've worked out how to make it work, and I will add that information.

HTH

Matt