Use a Bluehost Custom Domain with a Blogger Blog

Filed under administrative

I host my main blogs on Bluehost, use the WordPress blogging platform, and love both of them. However, it takes a little work to set up a self-hosted blog, so when I wanted to start a side project recently, I chose Blogger for its supposed ease of use.

I purchased my new domain from Bluehost and found Google’s directions for using a custom domain with Blogger. They seemed fairly simple at first, but when I actually tried to follow them, I found that they didn’t make a bit of sense to me.

And so I present my own directions for using a Bluehost custom domain with a Blogger blog:

1. Log in to your Bluehost account and scroll down until you see Register Domain.

2. Choose your new domain and purchase it as an add-on. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.

3. Click on the Help tab in the upper-righthand corner of your screen.

4. Choose Open a Ticket from the Main Menu on the lefthand navigation.

5. Click the radio button for the first option, A Record/MX/Cname Changes.

6. The ticket form will automatically load. Fill in your e-mail address, your full name, and the domain you’ve just purchased. (Example: newdomain.com)

7. In the Message box, write something like the following:

Hello Support,

My main domain is [olddomain.com], and the last 4 digits of the credit card I used to purchase my domain are [- – – -].

Please make the following changes for me:

A record: [newdomain.com] –> 216.239.32.21, 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21, 216.239.38.21
CName: [www.newdomain.com] –> ghs.google.com

Thanks,
Your Name

In my case, olddomain.com would be unapologeticallymundane.com, because that’s the original domain I purchased with Bluehost in 2008. www.newdomain.com would be the one I recently purchased for my side project.

You can change the www.yourdomain.com to blog.yourdomain.com or whatever subdomain you may have set up with Bluehost. Google’s instructions tell you that you must use a subdomain, and I had no idea that www is considered a subdomain at first.

8. Submit the form, and in a couple of hours, you should hear back from Bluehost at whatever e-mail address you entered at the top of the form to open a ticket.

9. Bluehost says the domain will be ready in 1-4 hours. If you’re impatient like me, you’ll begin checking after about 5 minutes, but it’s best to wait the full 4 hours if your Blogger is already up and running and has visitors.

10. Log in to Blogger and go to Settings –> Publishing –> Switch to Custom Domain –> Switch to Advanced Settings.

11. Type in your domain name, complete with www or blog or whatever subdomain you chose. Type in the word verification at the bottom of the page, hit Save Settings, and you’re finished!

It seems easy now, but I had no idea if I was doing anything right the first time around. Please leave a comment if you have any questions; I won’t judge.

11 Comments

  1. Adam says:

    You forgot to include your password. What is it?

  2. MHW says:

    “I chose Blogger for it’s supposed ease of use.”

  3. Tracey says:

    What a great tutorial! Very clear and easy to follow. I am certainly glad my Google search brought me here. Saved me a few headaches, that’s for sure.

    Oh, wait. I don’t have to do any of this myself, since you already did it for me! Keep up the good work!

    Love,
    Tracey

    • Dear Tracey,

      Thanks for the kind words. Perhaps Google will rank me higher in its results thanks to your name-dropping.

      Sincerest regards,
      Katie

  4. Kelly says:

    Most of the time when I read posts that contain the words “host,” “blog,” “domain” and other technical terms, I understand them about as well as I understand Farsi, which is to say, NOT AT ALL.

    However, this seems very clear indeed, and I’m glad someone is finally looking out for the technologically retarded among us.

    Frankly, I think the Church ought to canonize you.

    • Did you choose Farsi because you know Kamran speaks in it constantly on the phone when he wants to tell his parents he’s looking for a new girlfriend but doesn’t want me to know? Or is that just one of only a handful of languages you happen to not know?

      I wish there was a way to, you know, hide these sorts of posts from my front page and feed so y’all don’t have to look at them, but I figured that if I was struggling with it, someone else out there has to be, too. Someday, when you lose your mistress, you may need this.

      • Kelly says:

        Kamran speaks Farsi?! I mean, of course he does, he’s Iranian, but OMG HOLY CRAP THAT IS SO SEXY. Do you just want to, like, eat him with a spoon when he’s on the phone with his folks?!

        I know only one language besides English (French), and I only know that one well enough to read it. I couldn’t have a conversation with a French-speaker over the age of four.

        • I pretty much think it’s the best. Especially because he uses a TOTALLY DIFFERENT VOICE when he speaks Farsi. I’m going to make him do it for you when you come to visit us next year. The only problem I have with it is that there’s some word he uses all the time that starts with a kate sound, so I always think he’s about to say my name, but then he never does. Jerk.

          Kamran also speaks French, so you can have at him when we all eat dinner at Les Halles, and y’all can say things like “I like to dance” and “please pass the sausage” to each other without me knowing.

  5. Sorry to hear your struggle.

    May have been easier to send an email to an IT expert Guy friend to help walk you through it.
    To bad you don’t know any.

    It’s not like I was able to totally transform and rebuild my blogsite in 24 hours with new subdomainname and a background images that you can personalize.

    Oh wait I was able.