Domain name mapping is broken at This Is Broken

While reading This Is Broken (a most excellent blog!), I noticed something odd - namely that their domain name mapping was broken.

Meaning that if you go here: http://www.thisisbroken.com, you end up here: http://broken.typepad.com.

Mark Hurst (the founder of This Is Broken) may change the above setup after he notices this post, so please take the above as just an example of this type of problem and please do not bother commenting that it has been fixed!

It appears that Mark has set up a simple "forward" of the domain name to his blog instead of "mapping" the domain name to his blog.

This is rather understandable in that, while TypePad (where his blog is hosted) makes it fairly straightforward to map a domain from their end, domain name registrars definitely do not.

Also, this is not meant to pick on Mark - it is rather to leverage his This Is Broken audience to help encourage awareness of this issue so that domain name registrar companies might recognize that it is very much in their self-interest to make this a much much easier thing for the average user to "fix" (see #5 below), and thereby also help users to "fix" the bigger underlying problem - namely that, for example, while TypePad is a most excellent blog hosting service, should you ever wish (or need!) to switch away to a different service in the future, having everything nicely and neatly under your own domain name instead of theirs is a rather Good Thing...

Since the thisisbroken.com domain name is registered through GoDaddy and the site is hosted at TypePad, here is a tour through the incredibly non-obvious (broken?!) solution:

Note that to be of the most general help, the generic "exampledomain.com" and "exampleblog.typepad.com" will be used going forward.

1. First, you will not be able to do domain name mapping at all if you don't already have a TypePad Plus or Pro account (meaning you would need to upgrade from the TypePad Basic account). To upgrade, sign into your account, click the "Control Panel" tab, then the "Account Info" tab, and then the "Upgrade/Downgrade Account" tab, and follow the directions from there.

2. Assuming now that your TypePad account is either a Plus or Pro account, and that you are signed in, go to your "Control Panel" section, select the "Site Access" tab, then the "Domain Mapping" tab, click the button that says "Begin Here: Map a Domain Name," enter your exampledomain.com domain name in the form and click the "Get DNS settings" button, then on the next page click the "Complete Final Step" button. If this is the only blog set up under your TypePad account, then simply click the "Add Domain" button, otherwise if you have more than one blog under this TypePad account, click the "My weblog" radio button option and select the name of the blog you wish to map the domain name to and click the "Add Domain" button, then on the next page click the "Close Window" button.

3. Go to GoDaddy, sign in, go to "Manage Domains" and select the exampledomain.com domain name you wish to map. If you already have the exampledomain.com domain name forwarded to the exampleblog.typepad.com blog, remove the forwarding setting (yes this will "break" the exampledomain.com domain name for a short while, so do this during a period of low site traffic) and then wait for your GoDaddy account to show that the name is no longer forwarded at all (usually takes an hour or so). Note that you _may_ be able to avoid this step and keep the forwarding live during the next step (setting the CNAME), but I have never been able to make that successfully work with GoDaddy and ended up with even more downtime undoing and then redoing everything in the "proper" sequence as described here.

After finishing the de-forwarding stuff, click "Total DNS Control," then "Total DNS Control And MX Records," then "Launch Total DNS Control Manager" then click "Edit" to the right of the line in the CNAME section that says "www @ 3600," then change the @ in Step 2 of the form to the underlying blog: exampleblog.typepad.com and click "continue," then on the next screen click "update," and then wait patiently for a few hours or so until it propagates through the Internet DNS system. When it has done so, you will once again be able to reach exampleblog.typepad.com from the "www." version of the URL (http://www.exampledomain.com).

Then comes a very non-obvious step, and that is to set (reset) the forward on the domain name so that the exampledomain.com domain name is forwarded through your GoDaddy control panel to point to http://www.exampledomain.com. To do so, from the GoDaddy control panel select the exampledomain.com domain name you wish to forward, click on the "Forward Domains" button (which is the bottom center button of the cluster of buttons above the domain names list), then where it says "Forward To:" enter the full "www." version of the URL (http://www.exampledomain.com), and then click the "Save Changes" button below.

An aside: for a few weeks around three months ago GoDaddy broke this step and would not permit a domain name to forward to itself - but fortunately they undid that change as this appears to be the only way to get the non-"www." URL (http://exampledomain.com) to be successfully resolved to end up at the URL of the underlying blog instead of a GoDaddy default placeholder page. This is when I first started trying to encourage them (to no avail) to consider completely "un-breaking" their domain name mapping process (more on this below).

4. Then it is back to TypePad to finish the domain name mapping process (where TypePad republishes all of your links so that they are of the format http://www.exampledomain.com/2005/06/post.html instead of http://exampleblog.typepad.com/2005/06/post.html). Go back to your TypePad account to your "Control Panel" section, select the "Site Access" tab, then the "Domain Mapping" tab, click and select the box under "Active" that is to the right of the exampledomain.com domain name that you just did all of the above for, and then click the "Set" button at the bottom of that page. Then you will have to republish the blog. If the option is not present there, then you can get to it by going back around to the "Weblogs" tab, selecting the "Edit Design" option for that blog, and then clicking the "Publish" button.

5. Finally, please also be sure to write to GoDaddy customer service to point out to them that it would be a Very Good Experience if they were to simplify Step 3 from above to be simply: "Enter the URL of the TypePad blog that you would like this domain name to be mapped to:" and then have all of that stuff happen automagically. But please do not be too hard on them since they still have the best system, service, and pricing by far of all domain name registrars (and in one of the coolest and most savvy business moves ever, they even permit their resellers like Domaindo to "private-label" their stuff at even lower prices but with all of the regular GoDaddy functionality and customer service!)

Comments

[Kim]

This was really helpful to me to get my domain name without the "www" to resolve to the main page of my blog. I am going to try that step you suggested. Thank you.

One quick question: I have been frustrated in that Google has not indexed my site, even though I have been up for six months now, and with many very popular inbound links from highly rated blogs. What am I doing wrong? I even have Adsense serving up highly relevant ads to my site, yet Google's index still refuses to include me. Does the domain mapping, and the unresolved domain without the WWW have anything to do with it. All inbound links point to my domain, and not Typepad's URL. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[Charlie Wood]

This is exactly the info I was looking for. One question though: when I forward the domain to the www record of itself, GoDaddy tells me that I need to be using their 'parked domain' servers for forwarding to work. Do I need oto modify my domain to use those servers for this solution?

TIA
-Charlie

[okokokalready]

Bless you my child..
After five days of sheer hades and back you solved my problem in 2 hours... Bless you.

[Joe Hutsko]

Hi, thanks for the very helpful post. I'm confused, however, at the part near the end that starts with "Then comes a very non-obvious step, and that is to set (reset) the forward on the domain name so that the exampledomain.com domain name is forwarded through your GoDaddy control panel to point to http://www.exampledomain.com." You don't explain how to actually do the reset you describe. Or if you do, I missed it. Can you clarify? In other news, I've been unable to FTP to my joeygadget.com site directly, and must enter the IP address instead, which seems to have something to do with why I can't seem to verify this site via Google site verification. When I log in FTP it says typepad cannot be found, etc. Very confused, and I agree, it sure would be nice if there was an easier way to do this on GoDaddy. Thanks in advance for your help as far as the reset question, above. Joe

[okokokalready]

only one hint.

typepad had me confused with the complete final step button. I didn't realize that the radio buttons would appear AFTER I clicked that. I mean complete final step sounded like the end and I needed to point the domain to the new weblog I am setting up for a friend/myself. I was going in circles and lets face it with the way things are on the net I didn't assume it would appear after. Took the plunge when I didn't get a straight answer because if you were saying it should appear it must.

Dang it did.

After I clicked complete final step.
[blinks like owl] Can I go back to doing design now?

Again without your post I would have been lost.

[Debra Hamel]

Your directions have saved me more times than I can count. Just thought I'd finally thank you!