I’ve seen a few posts recently from people suggesting they’d like to buy their own domain name and have their blog pointing to it- for example they’d rather have www.fabbymummyblog.com than www.fabbymummyblog.blogspot.com- but they don’t really know where to start.
This is actually surprisingly easy, especially if you buy your domain through blogger. It’s still not difficult if you buy it through a domain name registrar like 123-reg.co.uk but it is more involved. For the sake of this how to, I’ve just dealt with purchases through blogger (and that your blog is hosted with blogger, not wordpress or typepad, both of which are fine products).
Once you’ve set your blog up, click on the settings tab, and then on the publishing sub menu. You will then see a link that says “switch to custom domain”. Click on that and follow the instructions detailed (click on the image to the left for a larger version if you’re unsure).
And that is pretty much that. Blogger automaps your new domain to your blog so you don’t have to do anything else. Easier than you thought?
The next bit is very clever- once you own your own domain, you can get yourself an associated email account for free. So you could be claire@fabbymummyblog.com, rather than using a hotmail, yahoo or aol email address. This is a little more complicated but bear with me and I’ll try and explain it…
Point your browser over to Google Apps. When you ordered your custom domain through Blogger you should have had an email with login details for your Google Apps accounts. Login using the admin settings and you should be greeting with a screen like this:
