Google Hosting on subdomain
Post date: Sep 26, 2016 1:45:46 PM
The whole point of getting a domain name is to use it. Here we'll show you how to use it with Google Hosting (ghs) via the domain management interface. Two free hosting products are Google Sites and Blogger. They allow you to easily map a subdomain.
You can have an unlimited number of subdomains. In a web address such as www.wintegrated.com for example, "www" is the subdomain. Can you guess what is the subdomain in blog.wintegrated.com? Yes, it is "blog", while "wintegrated.com" is the domain name. Alternatively, your domain name may be called "second level domain" (SLD) while a subdomain becomes "third level domain". Dot com (.com) is a top level domain (TLD) and so are .net, .org and many others. TLDs may further be categorized in generic TLDs or gTLDs, as in our examples so far, or country TLDs or cTLDs, such as .ca, .us, .uk, .be. You may find more info on domain names on Wikipedia. When talking about domain forwarding and subdomains, your domain name as entered in a browser address bar, without any subdomains preceding it, is referred to as "naked domain".
Login with your credentials (which we have previously emailed to you) by clicking on the link above.
Go to Name Servers / DNS, then click on Modify DNS Zone.
Scroll down to CNAME records and follow the Google Help guide, choosing "Sites outside of Google Apps".
You can map more than one subdomain to the same Google Site, and you may choose which one is "canonical" - i.e., which one is most important and should be used in searches.
If the option to map the domain is not available, you might have to first add and verify your domain name via Google Webmaster Tools, as shown in the guide above.
For Blogger however, you can map one single subdomain to your blog (it can be www, blog, beta or anything you want), as follows:
Select the blog to update.
In the left menu, click Settings > Basic > Publishing.
Under your current domain, click Set up a 3rd party URL for your blog.
Enter your URL, including the www.
Click Save.
An error will appear with two CNAMEs.
Visit your domain management page (as shown above in the screenshot) and find the DNS (Domain Name System) or the CNAME settings.
Delete existing CNAME entries.
Enter the CNAMEs provided in the error message and click Save.
Wait for a few hours for your settings to activate, then follow steps 1–6 above.
It may take up to 24 hours for the process to complete. If you see an error after 24 hours, try the process again.
If you are still working on your Google Site website, you could create a subdomain and assign it to a "countdown / under construction blog" which we previously described, e.g., "blog". You can keep working on your Google Sites website and access it via its "sites.google.com/site/yoursitename" address, or you may add it a second or even third subdomain, such as "beta.yourdomain.com" and/or "backup.yourdomain.com". You make all these subdomains work with Google via the guides above, using CNAME records. You can then redirect the naked subdomain to any of them using the "Domain Forwarding" option in the interface shown above. You could also create a "www" subdomain via an A record and forward it to the countdown blog, until your Google Site is ready. Once it's ready, you may either forward it to your new Google Site (i.e., forward both the naked domain and www subdomain to the Google Site's address, previously set as a CNAME), or forward the naked domain to the www subdomain, delete the A record for the www subdomain and recreate it as a CNAME pointing to your new, working Google Site.
Congratulations! You are now a true Domain Ninja! :)