How to use a custom domain name with your blogger blog – Godaddy Edition

When you’re first starting out as a blogger, you don’t know if years down the lane you’ll be successful, and there are chances you’ll find out that maybe blogging is just not your thing. Maybe, you’re better off starting some other side hustle. 

So, it’s important that when you’re a beginner you start with either a free WordPress blog or a Blogger Blog and that way you don’t have to pay anything for the upkeep of your blog  (hosting, domain, etc.).  Within some months you’ll actually find out if blogging is something you want to do because you are starting to like it and if it has grown on you.

Getting A Custom Domain Name From GoDaddy

Now I know that getting a custom domain is a big step in anyone’s blogging journey. This means that you’re already in your comfort zone with blogging and now you plan on developing something solid and you expect to be blogging professionally.

One of the advantages of a Blogger blog is that it lets you use a custom domain for free, unlike WordPress.

I believe GoDaddy is the best one out there if you’re planning to use a custom domain for your Blogger blog, this is because I’ve used GoDaddy and I really, really like their support. And you’re going to need help when you mess something up, which you will if you don’t know about the tech stuff ( that’s the wrong word for it, I know).

Also, Google on its help forum suggests (while not directly) buying from GoDaddy, and they just seem to integrate well easily.


So I advise you purchase your domain name from GoDaddy if you’ve not already purchased one.

Setting Up Your Custom Domain Name To Work With Your Blogger Blog

Setting up your domain name to work with Blogger is a two-way process.

First, you’re going to add the two CNAME’s provided by Blogger to you:

1. Log in to your Blogger Account
2. Click the Settings Tab
3. Under the settings tab, click on Basics
4. There should be a section called “Publishing” it’s where your blogger blog domain is written.
5. Now you want to click on  “Add a custom domain name.”
6. Type the URL of your Domain name here (the one you purchased from GoDaddy) but make sure to add “www” in front of your domain name for it to work. For example; your domain name is ABC[.]com so add it as www.abc[.]com (remove the brackets!)
7. Click save
8. You should see an error and two CNAME’s listed below (probably in red colour or black)
9. The First CNAME is the same for everyone but the second one is unique. 

Now, you want to go back to your GoDaddy account, and locate the DNS Zone File/Manage DNS/DNS (it should basically take you to where your DNS is) tab and:

Follow these instructions:

1. Click Add a record
2.  Select record type to be CNAME
3. Host as “www“
4. Points to as ghs.google.com
5. Now copy the second CNAME that’s unique to you, given to you in after completing step 7 earlier. Now repeat step 1 and 2 and add the second CNAME in a similar manner. 
6. Click save changes
7.  Now you need to be adding A record again, to like your naked domain name to your blogger blog.
8. Click Add a record
9. Set type to A
10. Host to @
11. Points To as 216.239.32.21
12. Click save
13. Now you have to set up 3 more A records repeating steps 8-12, all values except “Points to” will remain the same, Points To values are: 216.239.34.21 , 216.239.36.21 , 216.239.38.21 respectively. 
14. Go to your blogger blog, click setting, then basics, and add your custom domain with a www before it, it will ask “use a missing files host?” let it remain as No. 
15. Click Save

? Note: You don’t need to point these A records in case you are using a subdomain such as subdomain.yourdomain.com 

Congratulations, you’ve successfully pointed your custom GoDaddy domain name to your blogger blog. Now wait for 48 hours for changes to take effect (usually they happen instantly, but you have to give it time.) One last thing that needs to be done after you wait 48 hours is:

1. Log in to your blogger account
2. click the settings tab
3. Then click basics
4. And click edit where you see “publishing.”
5. You should see an option that says “redirect yourdomain[.]com to www.yourdomain[.]com“
6. tick that option
7. Click save.

Now whenever someone looks up your website using either of the domain names with or without the www, they will still be able to see your site.

Want to skip with the trouble of setting things up yourself? Allow me to do it for you. I’ll map your domain to work with your blogger blog so that you can concentrate on blogging.

I hope you found this post helpful, if you’ve gotten yourself stuck somewhere, I’m available for help anytime. You can leave a comment, or you can contact me personally by purchasing this as a service.

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