Domain mapping and Typepad

This is something I did a while ago for my daughter's blog but as she's got bored with that and closed it down (blogs are so yesterday when you're eight), I thought I'd rescue it and post it here.  I bought EmilyRose.org when Emily was a baby and wanted to use it for her blog.  The blog was built using TypePad (www.typepad.com) which isn't as sophisticated as some but was fine for a seven-year-old.

The domain name was mapped onto the Typepad weblog using Register.com's DNS management. In case you want to do the same, here's how I mapped emilyrose.org onto olddog.typepad.com/emilyrose.

Step 1: Fix the DNS

Firstly, don't use "domain forwarding" as that is typically an HTML frame. Use DNS management but don't alter the DNS servers or the A record; you need to be able to get at the CNAME records. Not all registrars let you.  Register.com and GoDaddy.com work fine.  There is normally one CNAME entry that points the www subdomain to the main A record (www.emilyrose.org CNAME emilyrose.org); change that to point the www subdomain to olddog.typepad.com.

Step 2: Map the domain in Typepad

Typepad makes this very straightforward.  In Typepad, click on Control Panel > Site Access > Domain Mapping.  Click on the 'Map a Domain name' button and type in emilyrose.org.  Don't put the www on the front: that probably should work but didn't for me.  Typepad will show you the DNS settings which you've already fixed.

Click 'Complete Final Step' and then choose the blog that you are connecting this to.  The final stage is to check the 'Active' box alongside the Domain and click 'Set'. 

Step 3: Check if it's working

So www.emilyrose.com is now mapped to olddog.typepad.com/emilyrose. Remember that this can take 24 hours to take effect.

To check the DNS is set up correctly, bring up a CMD window and type in nslookup.  At the prompt, type in the name of the domain you are trying to map:

> www.emilyrose.org

You should then get a response along these lines:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    olddog.typepad.com
Address:  66.151.149.10
Aliases:  www.emilyrose.org

>

If it's not like this, you got it wrong.  If you then get a 404 error when you type in your domain, you did something wrong at the Typepad end - or Typepad hasn't caught up yet.  Give it a bit of time and try again.

(Update 10 Jun 2007): Step 4 - AND domain forwarding

Since doing this, I have noticed that some sites link to emilyrose.org instead of linking to www.emilyrose.org.  Because of the way I'd set this up, emilyrose.org still links to my ISP's parking page so Technorati, for example, was showing a picture of the parking page instead of a picture of my home page

So, as I'm using godaddy, I've switched on domain forwarding as well but only to forward emilyrose.org to http://www.emilyrose.org.  The CNAME record to then forward www.emilyrose.org on to olddog.typepad.com does the rest of the job. 

This may seem a roundabout solution but it does work. 

Comments

[Steve Roesler]

Wow. I've been trying for more than a week to get the GoDaddy domain mapping thing straight. Still can't get it to work and I'm pretty tech savvy. Did you do anything special with the server settings or anything that might have been left out in the post?

Thanks, Steve