Monday, December 6, 2010

Eventually I will stop referencing my work on subdomain / web blog management here, but

Eventually I will stop referencing my work on subdomain / web blog management here, but since everything started here, this is where I need to wrap up the discussion. I have been tirelessly setting up my subdomains for a specific set of websites under SeatbeltBuckles.com with each model of car having it's own subdomain, like: viper.seatbeltbuckles.com and chevrolet.seatbeltbuckles.com and so on. The goal here is to be able to manage the content of my website through blogspot.com and not have to use a web design software outside of logging into blogspot and therefore I can manage multiple websites and their content with one login. So far, so good. Also I am setting up a Wordpress folder for each category of content under the domain name and testing some of the features of Wordpress directly against BlogSpot. So far the potential for one management location for the websites is a huge plus for blogspot, once I finish setting up the blogs. Time will tell.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Great it worked, subdomain management of blogs through blogspot

Great, I can consolidate my blogs and use them from my domains so that there is a self-organized way to update post and keep the blogs separate. The first such project was to assign a subdomain to free-speech.org and link it to a current blog, Something Big. The following is a link to the successful setup: http://wherestheblog.free-speech.org What else can I say, Mission Accomplished?

The next step is to see if features and templates can be merged with WordPress themes.

Where's The Blog? Section 3 - Copying web content and pasting in blog

No, copying web text and images did not work completely. It partially worked as it allowed me to paste the text, but none of the html or images pasted with this trick. I will spend some time now setting up wherestheblog.free-speech.org using an underused domain name to point to one of my underused blogs. Text on how to do this is once again pasted here from a Google Help page:

How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?Share
Twitter Gmail Blogger Buzz Orkut Google Reader Bookmarks » More
Comment Print Note: The setup process for newly-purchased domains may take up to 24 hours.


Publishing on Blog*Spot is the fastest and easiest way to use all of Blogger's great features. (And for free, no less!) If you don't care to have blogspot.com in your blog's address, though, you can get a domain of your own. We'll continue to host all your content as before, but it will be displayed at your new address. (Unlike FTP publishing, which requires you to buy both a domain name and a hosting service.)

Choose and Register Your Domain
The first thing you'll need to do is to choose a domain name, like example.com and register it. You can register domain names from any of a number of different registrars, and you can use .com, .org, .net or any other valid addresses. Remember: you only need to get the domain name; you don't have to pay extra for hosting service. The easiest way to register a domain is to buy your domain directly through Blogger. If you go this route, we'll automatically configure all of your relevant DNS settings and attach your new domain to your existing blog immediately.

Update the DNS Settings
DNS stands for Domain Name System, and a DNS server determines what site a given address takes you to. So far, you have a domain name but none of the servers on the internet know what to do with it yet. To take care of this, you need to do two things:

•Create a CNAME record for your blog's address, which should be a subdomain of the form www.example.com.To create a CNAME record for your domain with the DNS, associating your domain with:

ghs.google.com.

The exact procedure for doing this varies depending on your domain registrar, but you can find instructions for many common registrars here. If yours isn't listed, or if you run into other difficulties, you can contact your registrar directly and they'll be able to help you out.
•Create 'A' NAME records for your naked domain (blog.com)


Note: The following information applies to naked domains only!! If you're setting up a subdomain then this does NOT apply to you! :-)
Creating A records for your naked domain is important as it allows Google to redirect people who use in your naked domain name (blog.com) to your blog page (www.example.com). If you do not do this, visitors who leave off the www will see an error page.
There are four separate A records you will create, and can be done from the same control panel you accessed your CNAME records. Simply point your naked domain (example.com, without the 'www') to each of the following IP addresses:
216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21
Your DNS setup is now complete!

Updated Where's the Blog? blog optimization and consolidation effort

I changed the skin for the front page and see that there are more options than I have been using on Blogspot.com. I looked at the gadgets and found that Amazon dominates the product gadgets and there isn't really any gadgets to link products to the blog. Here is a replublished version of this blog: http://t-shirts.org/wherestheblog.htm ,however, there seems to be some formatting issues that may simply be related to applying the new template to this blog. I do like the Dashboard for managing different blogs, but now I need to look and see if there is a way to directly feed these pages into my main websites without having to republish the blog page itself, or are all post required to sit on the blogspot.com servers? Hmmmm.

Now I'm getting somewhere. I seems I can allow Google to host my domain name for an account and then direct all of my blogs to that account, or set up separate routing for a subdomain and allow that the be my publishing for the blog. Either or both may work. I am not sure I can have multiple blogs, each with a separtate routing to a subdomain. Must check.

Ok, I see a light now at the end of the first tunnel. I can setup a subdomain on any of my specific websites and then publish that blog under that domain name but setting up the DNS to route to Google for each particular blog account. This should work to keep me from having to deal with a new software, although I really like the options available in Word Press. My daughter discovered that you can simply copy and paste from a browser into the WordPress editor and the images and html code simply show up and work. How amazing is that? I haven't tried it because I don't have much set up on Word Press yet, but I do need to test that on this blog editor.

Here Goes:
How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?Share
Twitter Gmail Blogger Buzz Orkut Google Reader Bookmarks » More
Comment Print Note: The setup process for newly-purchased domains may take up to 24 hours.


Publishing on Blog*Spot is the fastest and easiest way to use all of Blogger's great features. (And for free, no less!) If you don't care to have blogspot.com in your blog's address, though, you can get a domain of your own. We'll continue to host all your content as before, but it will be displayed at your new address. (Unlike FTP publishing, which requires you to buy both a domain name and a hosting service.)

Choose and Register Your Domain
The first thing you'll need to do is to choose a domain name, like example.com and register it. You can register domain names from any of a number of different registrars, and you can use .com, .org, .net or any other valid addresses. Remember: you only need to get the domain name; you don't have to pay extra for hosting service. The easiest way to register a domain is to buy your domain directly through Blogger. If you go this route, we'll automatically configure all of your relevant DNS settings and attach your new domain to your existing blog immediately.

Update the DNS Settings
DNS stands for Domain Name System, and a DNS server determines what site a given address takes you to. So far, you have a domain name but none of the servers on the internet know what to do with it yet. To take care of this, you need to do two things:

•Create a CNAME record for your blog's address, which should be a subdomain of the form www.example.com.To create a CNAME record for your domain with the DNS, associating your domain with:

ghs.google.com.

The exact procedure for doing this varies depending on your domain registrar, but you can find instructions for many common registrars here. If yours isn't listed, or if you run into other difficulties, you can contact your registrar directly and they'll be able to help you out.
•Create 'A' NAME records for your naked domain (blog.com)


Note: The following information applies to naked domains only!! If you're setting up a subdomain then this does NOT apply to you! :-)
Creating A records for your naked domain is important as it allows Google to redirect people who use in your naked domain name (blog.com) to your blog page (www.example.com). If you do not do this, visitors who leave off the www will see an error page.
There are four separate A records you will create, and can be done from the same control panel you accessed your CNAME records. Simply point your naked domain (example.com, without the 'www') to each of the following IP addresses:
216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21
Your DNS setup is now complete!

Blog Consolidation - Where's the Blog?

I am torn between many products that overlap in one way and that is that I am the person working on them. The problem is that I have experimented with many different softwares, like blogspot.com, wordpress, simple engines bulletin board/message board and various shopping cart environments that each require login and maintenance. It's killing me when I combine that with my web development, SEO responsibilities and basic t-shirt design needs, not to mention the burden of email management and automatic form responses via 3rd party vendors and inquiries. It's not worth hiring people to manage these departments, but it's not worth giving them up either. I need a super blog, a management system that allows me to consolidate my blogging and keep all of these areas updated with new material.

For now I am going to make a Super Blog using WordPress as the ubiquitous tool for composing all of my information, then republishing each page as a static web page. I liked the idea of calling it Where's The Blog? and using that as a lead in on all of my websites, like wherestheblog.ekay.com and wherestheblog.seatbeltbelt.com, but using one software to create the pages as a master control program. Once I start this there will be no turning back. I have also used Cerebus as an email software manager, but that hasn't really worked either, but the general idea is good.

Ok, Blogspot kinda answers the blog-consolidation problem shown above with the Dashboard, but I am not happy with the look of the webpages that are created under the blogspot headings. I suppose I could research the skins available and formating potential for blogspot and work on that before I go start something new. I mean I am here already.