So, I've been playing for the past week or so with consolidating and rearranging my domain names into a more cohesive set of services that Feli and I can use for e-mail, hosting and calendar sharing. Up to now, I've been using Speakeasy for my hosting and e-mail (as well as my DSL service). I've been rather happy with the, but the lack of a good calendaring service (and just needing to decide what to do with my other domains) got me thinking.
I started playing using domain.com as my registrar and finally figured out how to do things like subdomains (ie: blog.michaelandfelicia.com), integration with Blogger and Google Apps. So, what I hope to do is give a quick HOWTO on getting all of this to work together with domain.com. Though this is specific to domain.com, but basics should work for other sites.
Step 1: Enable DNS management with domain.com
Before you can make any custom DNS changes, you need to enable domain.com's DNS management. If it's not already done, you can add it for free using the Add Services menu item on the control panel.
Step 2: Disable page forwarding and e-mail forwarding
For each of these, go to Manage from the domain page and select "Remove Service".
Step 3: Configure a Google Apps for Domains account
You can sign up at http://www.google.com/a/. By default it will offer you a Pro account, which is a bit much for just a personal set of services, so pick the Standard settings and work through the configuration and setup options
Step 4: Authenticate the domain
Google (for good reason) requries you to authenticate your ownership of the domain in question. The easiest way to do this is to create a CNAME record on domain.com, so when authenticating your domain, pick this option. Google will offer you a name that looks like "google<numbers/letters>". Copy that and go to the domain.com DNS settings page. Paste the name into the CNAME record field and enter google.com on the second field. (I'll enter screenshots as I have time)
Step 5: Configure E-mail
While creating the CNAME record, enter the MX (e-mail) records. Google currently has 6 entries that need to be created. You'll enter each one individually into the MX field on that page and hit update. You can find the settings when you go to activate e-mail in Google Apps or in this answer page. Once you've added all 6 items, you should be able to receive e-mail.
Step 6: Configuring Blogger
If you want to use your blog as your primary website, log into Blogger and go to blog settings -> publishing -> advanced settings. From here, enter your domain name and submit. If you want to do a subdomain (ie blog.michaeloland.com), you can select Advanced settings again and type in the full domain name and hit submit.
Step 7: Add the CNAME record for your blog
Back in the domain.com control panel, add another CNAME record, this time either leave it blank for the default website (ie www.michaeloland.com) or the subdmian name (ie blog for blog.michaelandfelicia.com) and in the host add ghs.google.com. Hit update and your blog should be ready.
Step 8: Configure BlueHost
To use BlueHost as your primary webhost, add 2 more A records (www and ftp). To get the appropriate IP address, you will need to contact BlueHost support.
At this point, you should be good to go. For me, the nameserver propagation took about 2 hours, but it could take up to 3 days for everything to clear out. If this doesn't work for you or you see soemthing wrong, please leave comments and I'll update this.
No comments:
Post a Comment