Mapping Your Domain to Another Service

Part of the beauty of having your own domain is that you can actually point a domain, and even better various subdomains, to external, third-party services. For example, you could map portfolio.jimgroom.net onto a portfolio site kept on services like UMW Blogs, Tumblr, WordPress.com, etc.

Mapping your domain is an important part of Domain of One's Own in that it reinforces the idea that you don't necessary need to host all your own applications, but you should be mindful of making them part of a domain you control, and a subdomain you can move quickly and easily if need be.

Mapping Your Domain to UMW Blogs
Below is a tutorial for mapping a subdomain onto UMW Blogs. To Create a Subdomain see this tutorial.

To edit your DNS Settings go to the Websites & Domains tab and click on DNS Settings.



DNS Settings
Now you need to manage the domain setting of your main domain in order to point the A-record to UMW Blogs' IP address.



Editing the A-Record


Double click on the A-record link and you will be taken to a page to edit the IP address. The UMW Blogs IP address is 174.37.153.244



Be sure to click OK.

DNS Updates
Be sure to update the settings.



Mapping the Subdomain on UMW Blogs
Finally, login to the blog you created on UMW Blogs, and go to Tools-->Domain Mapping and add the subdomain of your site, such as blog.murderinc.biz



Do Not Apply DNS Template Changes
Note: Do not apply DNS template changes when entering the main domain, it will revert your changes and you will lose your work.



Mapping Your Domain to Tumblr
This tutorial will take you through mapping a subdomain, such as tumblr.murderinc.biz, onto a Tumblr blog. Mapping your top-level domain, such as murderbiz.inc, is a different process you can read about [here http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_domains], but we don't recommend pointing your top level domain to Tumblr.

Make sure you have already created a subdomain that you want to map unto your Tumblr, something like tumblr.jimgroom.net. You can see a tutorial for this here. To edit your DNS Settings go to the Websites & Domains tab and click on DNS Settings.



DNS Settings
Now you need to manage the domain setting of your main domain in order to point the A-record to UMW Blogs' IP address.



Creating a CNAME in DNS Settings
On Tumblr, mapping a subdomain address requires a CNAME record entered into the DNS Settings.

Pointing Your Domain to Tumblr
Once you made the DNS changes on your web hosting login to Tumblr and follow the steps below:




 * Click the cog icon at the top of your Dashboard to access your blog's settings.
 * Click on the name of your blog at the bottom of the lefthand menu.
 * Check the box that says “Use a custom domain name” and enter your subdomain (e.g. www.mywebsite.com) or domain (e.g. mywebsite.com).
 * Click “Test your domain.”
 * Make sure your subdomain record type is set to "CNAME," and enter the CNAME Tumblr gives you into the "Canonical Name" field when editing your subdomain information (To edit this, go to DNS Settings > Main Domain > Subdomain url).
 * Correct problems if the test finds any, and click “Test your domain” until the test is successful.*Click "Save" at the top of the page next to your blog's name.

Tumblr's documentation
If you are having issues with this option you can see Tumblr official documentation on the mapping process here.

Mapping Your Domain to WordPress.com
To map your domain to a WordPress.com costs $13 a year per domain, which is a bit steep if you can already do it so seamlessly on UMW Blogs or Tumblr for free. If you already have a WordPress.com site and want to keep your work there be sure to see their tutorial for mapping WordPress.com site here.

Mapping Your Domain to Blogger
Once again we do not recommend you map the main domain you have to a service like Blogger, but rather a subdomain, something like blog.jimgroom.net. Unlike WordPress.com, Blogger allows you to map a domain for free. To create a subdomain see this tutorial.

The mapping a Blogger blog documentation was lifted from this site.

DNS Settings
To get started, go to the Websites & Domains tab and click on DNS Settings.



Now you need to manage the domain setting of your main domain in order to point the CNAME to Blogger.



Creating a CNAME
Look through the list and find the field for the CNAME entry with www and the subdomain you will be mapping. Click it to edit the settings.

Where it says Name, simply enter "www" and list ghs.google.com as the Host Name.



Updating Your Domain on Blogger
Now it’s time to make sure Blogger knows about your custom domain so that Google can direct readers to your blog. Just head back to Blogger and update the information on your Settings | Basic tab. Find the area for "Publishing," and click the link to add a custom domain.

http://www.google.com/help/hc/images/blogger/blogger_1233381_godaddy3_en.png

Then, click on "Switch to advanced settings."

http://www.google.com/help/hc/images/blogger/blogger_1233381_godaddy4_en.png

Enter in the URL for your custom domain in the text box provided, and click Save. That’s it! Your blogspot.com address will soon redirect to your new custom domain -- be patient, as it might take up to 24 hours for the redirect to start working.

http://www.google.com/help/hc/images/blogger/blogger_1233381_godaddy5_en.png

Some helpful notes
If your new domain isn't taking you to your blog, wait another day or two to make sure all the DNS servers have been updated. If it still isn't working, contact your registrar to make sure you entered the DNS settings correctly. Your original Blogspot address will automatically forward to your new domain. That way, any existing links or bookmarks to your site will still work. Your posted images will continue to display on your blog.

Mapping Your Domain to Google Sites
The tutorial below was taken from Google's support site here.

Mapping your site to your own URL
If you would like your site to appear under a custom domain URL that you control, such as www.example.com, you can have your site appear at that URL by going through a process known as mapping your site. Then, as people navigate your site, they will remain on www.example.com unless they click an external link.

To point visitors to this new URL, you might also have to make changes to your CNAME record, which controls what aliases are associated with your domain.

Mapping your site toward your custom URL
How you map your site to a custom URL depends on whether you are using Google Sites through Google Apps. You can tell if you are using Google Apps because the URL of your site will have "/a" after sites.google.com (for example, http://sites.google.com/a/AppsDomain.com/yoursite).

Sites through Google Apps
Sites created through Google Apps can only be mapped to a custom URL by the administrator for the Google Apps account. If you are an administrator, you can map a site to your Apps URL ("AppsDomain.com" in the example above) through the Google Apps control panel:


 * 1) Click Sites in the Google Apps control panel.
 * 2) On the Sites Settings page, select the Web address mapping tab.
 * 3) Click Add a new web address.
 * 4) Enter the name of the site you want to map to your Apps URL ("yoursite" in the example above).
 * 5) In the Web Address field, enter the sub-domain you'd like to map the site to. (For example, if you want to map your site to "www.AppsDomain.com", the sub-domain would be "www".)
 * 6) Select Add mapping and follow the instructions provided.
 * 7) You might have to wait up to 24 hours to see your changes.

Sites outside of Google Apps
If you own a domain and have access to change the CNAME record, you can map any site created in Google Sites outside of Google Apps (for example, sites.google.com/site) to a custom URL:


 * 1) Select Manage Site from the More Actions drop-down menu.
 * 2) Click the Web Address tab.
 * 3) Enter your custom URL in the Web Address text box, then click the Add button at the top of the page.

Changing your CNAME record
Depending on your domain registrar, you may need to make changes to your CNAME record in order for your site to be mapped:


 * 1) Sign in to the site where you control your own site with custom URL.
 * 2) Navigate to your Domain Name Server (DNS) management page. The location and name of this page varies by host, but can generally be found in the Domain Management or Advanced Settings section.
 * 3) Find the CNAME settings and in the section 'CNAME value or alias,' enter the sub-domain you'd like to map the URL to. The sub-domain for www.example.com would be www.
 * 4) Set the CNAME destination to the following address: ghs.google.com
 * 5) Save your changes with your domain host.

Notes about changing your URL
Mappings are restricted to sub-domain level only, such as www.example.com, wiki.example.com, or support.example.com. You can't map your domain to what is known as a naked domain, such as http://example.com. You can map up to five sub-domains to a given site. Mapping only works with Google Sites that are public. People visiting a private site will be redirected to your standard Google Sites URL. For instance, if people access a private site at http://private-wiki.example.com, they'll be redirected to the standard URL, http://sites.google.com/a/AppDomain.com/private-wiki.

'Address already used' error when mapping
If you're receiving an error that reads, "This address is already being used," you'll need to verify that the URL isn't mapped to another site.

Check the settings in the service control panel of your desired URL to see if it has already been mapped to another site.

Tell Us What We Missed
I'm sure their are other services we missed. Let us know what they are so we can help support them here. Send an email to to UMW Domains Support ([mailto:support@umwdomains.com support@umwdomains.com]).