wayne on August 19, 2008
The Publishing Settings tab allows you to define how your blog is accessed. Is it currently accessed by a URL that looks like myblog.blogspot.com? If so, then you are considered a sub-domain of www.blogspot.com. While I'm not terribly sure of the impact, I do know that it isn't the optimal set up. If you want to use your own domain name, this is where you would make those changes.
Note to new visitors! If you would like to know more about this series or view all available lessons, just follow the appropriate link.
Owning a domain name is easy, but sometimes the configuration can be daunting for some. I recommend finding someone that could make those changes for you if you are uncertain of your ability to make the change yourself. I'll review a bit of the configuration in here, but I'll stay high level and conceptual. I'm trying to keep the peanut gallery in the back awake. hahaha
It is also worth mentioning that this is something that you will want to read all the way through before attempting to change your domain around. It's always good to read the instructions all the way through before venturing into anything you don't understand.
Don't have a domain name?
If you don't have a domain but would like to buy one, you can buy your domain name here, it's much cheaper than you will find through Blogger.com or most other domain name shops, I guarantee that. You will also get free email under the domain as well (blahblah@newdomain.com). Perhaps I should note that this is one of my sites.
Got your domain name ready? Let's go for it!
What are we doing?
First, let's consider what we are doing here. We are changing the way people access our blog. If we take a look at the Views on Life blog, you'll see that to access the blog, you need to enter http://wayneonblogger.blogspot.com. The blogspot.com portion of that is Blogger's domain name. You don't own the domain, they do. They provide, however, a sub-domain of 'wayneonblogger' or anything that someone else hasn't already taken. By changing my publishing settings to use my own domain, visitors will then need to type either the domain, viewsonlife.net or www.viewsonlife.net, or if I already have a site going on www.viewsonlife.net, they will need to type something like blog.viewsonlife.net.
The latter would be used if I had an existing web site on www.viewsonlife.net and then wanted to add a blog later on in the life of the web site. If you have an existing web site, this is the method you would use to add a blogger.com blog to your web site.
Alternatively, if you have an existing blog on Blogger and are now simply upgrading to your own domain name, you might ask 'well, what about all those posts and image references?', and rightly so! Considering that even the lowliest of images are sometimes referred to by a full address (in other words, http://wayneonblogger.blogspot.com/images/someimage.jpg), we would normally need to modify things to ensure things are still referenced correctly after we switch to www.viewsonlife.net. We need to ensure that http://www.viewsonlife.net/images/someimage.jpg exists! Thankfully, Blogger.com does this for us. We don't need to worry about that.
Migrating to a custom domain name
I'll first walk through applying a domain name
To start, since I have a domain name already, I can click on the Custom Domain link found under the 'You're publishing on blogspot.com' header text. When I do that, the screen will change and it is here where Blogger tries to sell you a domain name, we already 
have one, so lets just flip over to advanced settings by clicking the link of the same text found in the middle-right of your screen.
The screen will change to display a text box for you to enter the domain name. Here is where you decide how your blog will be accessed. To make the blog the primary www.viewsonlife.net, I would enter www.viewsonlife.net into the text box.
However, what if I already had a web site at www.viewsonlife.net and was looking to augment my web site with a free blog from blogger, then I would enter something like blog.viewsonlife.net. This way people can still access my www site, and then I can also begin to reference my blog at blog.viewsonlife.net.
What about my subscribers?
We should also consider something else as well. What about our readers that subscribe to our feed? They are currently accessing the viewsonlife.net feed using http://wayneonblogger.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. When I change the domain name, it will be http://www.viewsonlife.net/feeds/posts/default. Will my users still be able to access my feed after I change the domain name? Yes, they will. At least, according to the tests I did. They say 'We won't leave your readers behind', and it appears that true for the feed as well.
IMPORTANT UPDATE!!! When you switch to another domain, your feed subscribers will be dropped! All feed subscribers will need to re-establish their feed with your site to continue getting updates when you post. Best to get the domain you want from the get-go so as to not have to deal with this major issue!
Changing your DNS
The last step, well you could do this before or after, it really doesn't matter, so long as you make sure you do it, is to modify or create a new DNS CName record to point requests to your blog. Because I made www.viewsonlife.net the primary way for readers to access my blog, I modified my existing www CName record to point to ghs.google.com.
If any of the above confused you, don't worry, you're in good company. DNS, which stands for Domain Name System translates IP addresses such as 72.193.17.200 into easier to remember domain names like www.viewsonlife.net. Imagine having to type in that number every time you wanted to access a blog! DNS makes it easy by shielding you from having to remember numbers like that.
There are some resources that Blogger provides to assist you with modifying your DNS settings listed below. If you need any assistance I will be willing to help you for the low cost of a simple link back to my site in a blog post that explains your transition to a new domain name.
The missing files host
Finally, if you need to, you can specify a secondary location for Blogger to look for a file if it does not find a file on your regular domain. This is handy if you deal with files and have your own web site. Most people will not need to use this.
Final thoughts
While creating a blog for free and accessing it using a third-party domain like blogspot.com isn't so bad, there comes a time when you want to stand out a little from the crowd that is Blogger.com blogs. One great way to do that is by finding a domain name and applying it to your blog. I think it adds a little more credibility to the blog if you are taking the professional angle on anything. If you are just blogging for fun, enjoy the free blog, you probably don't want or need a custom domain name right? At least the option is there for you if you change your mind.
Another consideration you will want to understand is that each and every search engine in the world that contains a reference to you, probably has your old domain whatever.blogspot.com. Blogger also sends these requests to the new domain as part of its 'no post left behind' initiative. (ok, that made me chuckle a bit).
Are you going to establish a domain for your blog? Do you need it? How about for your web site? Feel free to ask me any questions. I'll answer what I can about any of this and other things.
Happy computing!
Wayne
Blogger.com Help Topics
How do I use a custom domain name on my blog?
How do I create a CNAME record for my custom domain?
What is a missing files host?
