Recently I read that the
price of domain names was going to increase by over 50%, and, this spurred me
on to purchase a unique resource locator (URL), i.e. a web address, to give my
blog a more professional appearance.
Reading various articles about optimising your blog for search engines
in order to attract more readers, they all seemed to advocate the purchase of
your own web address. As you can see
from the address bar in your browser I have managed to implement my web address
on the blogger platform, but I thought I would just enlighten you to the various
stages I had to go through in case you are contemplating doing the same thing. I have also included the additional steps I had to undertake to enable my Adsense account to work with my new web address.
Adding a third party URL
to blogger
Step 1 is to go into the Settings - Basic option from the Blogger menu. You can see that the option of adding a third party URL is available under the Publishing section highlighted by the number 2 above. Clicking on this link will bring up the following options.
In number 3 you type in your custom domain name starting with the www, and, then click save as shown by number 4. After you have clicked the save button the following error 12 will appear.
The above error 12 as stated reflects the fact that Blogger cannot authenticate you are the owner of the web address. In order to do this you must enter the information given with your hosting provider so that the authentication can take place. This is where my first hurdle appeared. My hosting account is with a company called Vidahost. I logged in to the domain name management system on the Vidahost website, but was unable to enter the information in the form that was specified by Blogger above. The good news is that Vidahost provide an online chat facility, so I logged on to this, explained what I was trying to do, and, the helpful assistant made all the necessary changes for me. When I looked at the entries in the domain name management system afterwards, although the entries did feature the details above, they also had appended to them other characters, however, everything worked in linking together. My advice is, if you cannot get the information to work in the form suggested by Blogger above, then contact your domain name hosting provider direct either by chat or email. Just as an aside I cannot praise Vidahost enough. They have always helped me with any issues I have had, along with providing advice. I believe their hosting services are excellent value for money, and, I do not work or am associated with them. As you probably have gathered I would recommend them wholeheartedly.
Although the Blogger instructions indicated that your new domain name would take over 12 hours before it would be recognised, I found that this process was complete within two hours. In order to check your web address is attached to your Blogger account you have to complete steps 1 - 4 above, and, when you do not receive an error message then all is well, and, your new web address will work.
Adsense adverts stopped working after adding the third party URL
I must admit that I did not expect what happened next, in that all my Adsense adverts just appeared as blank boxes. I automatically assumed that because my blog was still being hosted on the Blogger platform that Adsense would carry on as normal. This is not the case and you have to register your new third party domain name (web address) with Adsense so that they can approve it. To do this you have to log in to your Google Adsense account. I do this via my Blogger account.
When you are in the Adsense account, click on the cog wheel as shown in the diagram on the left highlighted 5. This will produce a sub menu from which you can choose the setting option.
Clicking on the settings option will bring up the Account screen as shown on the left. From this under the Account section select Site management as shown by number 6. This brings up the site management tool and allows you to enter your new domain name starting with www. After you have clicked on the "ADD SITE" button nothing really much happens, and, I assumed that I would wait until I received authorisation from Google. After a couple of hours I went back to the Site management screen, and, to my surprise this time at the top I had a message in red stating that in order for the authorisation process to proceed I needed to add Adsense code to my Blogger website.
This puzzled me somewhat because I assumed that as I already had adverts displayed on my blog it would pick up the code from these. This is wrong. You need to generate new Adsense code and add it to your blog. I just replaced one on my adverts in one blog post with the new code. I left all the others with the previous code. On checking back in the Site management screen after a couple of hours the message had disappeared. I checked the blog to see if adverts were appearing, but they were still blank.
Around 8 hours later I received an email from Google to tell me that my application to show adverts on my new URL had been successful. I checked the blog, and, to my great relief all the adverts were now showing, even those with the old code. My quest was now complete. I have to say that even after having my Adsense account for a number of years, I have still not achieved that elusive £10 to trigger my first payment (I have not yet even reached 40% of this amount). This is just a warning to say displaying adverts on your blog is not a way to achieve great wealth! You may say that if wrote better content, and, I will achieve more.
Permalinks
To round off this blog post I am just going to mention permalinks. I did not used to use these but have started to now I have added my third party URL. Although not obligatory I read that it helped your search result rankings, and, since I have started adding them I do believe that this may be true.
Many thanks for reading, please fell free to share this post , and, leave any comments you may have.
Although the Blogger instructions indicated that your new domain name would take over 12 hours before it would be recognised, I found that this process was complete within two hours. In order to check your web address is attached to your Blogger account you have to complete steps 1 - 4 above, and, when you do not receive an error message then all is well, and, your new web address will work.
Adsense adverts stopped working after adding the third party URL
I must admit that I did not expect what happened next, in that all my Adsense adverts just appeared as blank boxes. I automatically assumed that because my blog was still being hosted on the Blogger platform that Adsense would carry on as normal. This is not the case and you have to register your new third party domain name (web address) with Adsense so that they can approve it. To do this you have to log in to your Google Adsense account. I do this via my Blogger account.
This puzzled me somewhat because I assumed that as I already had adverts displayed on my blog it would pick up the code from these. This is wrong. You need to generate new Adsense code and add it to your blog. I just replaced one on my adverts in one blog post with the new code. I left all the others with the previous code. On checking back in the Site management screen after a couple of hours the message had disappeared. I checked the blog to see if adverts were appearing, but they were still blank.
Around 8 hours later I received an email from Google to tell me that my application to show adverts on my new URL had been successful. I checked the blog, and, to my great relief all the adverts were now showing, even those with the old code. My quest was now complete. I have to say that even after having my Adsense account for a number of years, I have still not achieved that elusive £10 to trigger my first payment (I have not yet even reached 40% of this amount). This is just a warning to say displaying adverts on your blog is not a way to achieve great wealth! You may say that if wrote better content, and, I will achieve more.
Permalinks
To round off this blog post I am just going to mention permalinks. I did not used to use these but have started to now I have added my third party URL. Although not obligatory I read that it helped your search result rankings, and, since I have started adding them I do believe that this may be true.
Many thanks for reading, please fell free to share this post , and, leave any comments you may have.
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