No Immediate Solution For 1And1 Customers With Unverifiable Custom Domains

Since Blogger restored Custom Domain Publishing last month, with the new domain ownership verification requirement, there have been a few complaints from customers of some registrars who just can't provide the required DNS address record for ownership verification.

My registrar says that I can't have two "CNAME" records in the same subdomain.

and

My registrar's domain manager wizard displays an error saying "Address too long.", when I try to add the "CNAME".

Blog owners contacting the registrar, and asking for help, are generally told

That's Blogger's problem!

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(Update 2012/11): Blogger Engineering has provided a workaround for this problem, with any uncooperative registrar, such as 1And1 - use of a (free) third party DNS host.

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What not all blog owners realise is that the new "CNAME" must be just that - there is no substitute here.

Some of the more patient blog owners have made various suggestions, to get us moving towards a solution.

1. Blogger Support needs to work with the problem registrars, and convince them to improve their service.
2. Blogger Support needs to provide an alternate ownership verification procedure - maybe equivalent to the Google Webmaster Tools meta tag verification procedure.
3. Blogger Support needs to clean up their "CNAME" setup instructions, and remove mention of the problem registrars - so future blog owners won't choose these registrars to host their domains.

About 3/4 of the problem reports have come from customers of 1And1. Using that registrar as a starting point, I contacted Blogger Support and suggested the 3 alternatives, outlined above. The Blogger Engineer responding seemed to think that only suggestion #3 - cleanup of the per registrar "CNAME" addition instructions was immediately possible.

It's possible, then, that we will eventually see less problem reports from 1And1 customers - and hopefully others - as Blogger Engineering cleans up their domain setup instructions. The current customers of uncooperative registrars, unfortunately, are unlikely to see relief, for the near future.

This is an unfortunate situation for these 1And1 customers. The best solution for them is to move domain registration to another, more helpful, registrar. Unfortunately, most registrars don't allow domain registration transfers immediately after initial purchase - waiting periods of 30, or even 60 - days are normal. And domain registration fees are not refunded.

This leaves new 1And1 customers, and similar victims, with several options - none of them good. First, publish the blog back to BlogSpot, so the blog can be accessed by existing readers.

• Wait 30 - 60 days, with the domain dead, then transfer domain registration to a more helpful registrar and activate.
• Purchase a second domain, from a more helpful registrar.
• Forget about custom domain publishing.

The latter alternative has motivated several victims to choose a fourth alternative.

• Move their blog hosting to a different service.

None of this can be good for Blogger's reputation.

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