AR Outside Blog - Nameservers

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AR Outside Blog - Nameservers

Anybody else (besides Jonathon Washburn, of course http://www.jonwashburn.com/ ) got their DNS nameservers mapped yet to an Active Rain 'Outside Blog" ... ???

Using a domain name I had registered at GoDaddy, I mapped it to the new Active Rain Outside Blog nameservers

It's been 48 hours, and so far, no joy

I know the rule is to allow up to 72 hours, but I have had domains propagate in as little as 10 minutes.

Anybody else try this? Or are there still a few kinks being worked out?

I'm gonna repeat his name a few times, maybe he has a google alert that will pick it up:

jon washburn, jonathon washburn, jon washburn, active rain, hello, jon, are you there?

P.S. I know you guys don't intend to offer support on this aspect of Outside Blogs, but I'm not exactly a "high-maintenance" customer. :-) I just can't see what I might have missed in my excitement.

I'm cross posting this from a comment by Brad Andersohn ~ Community Builder (ActiveRain) on Jeremy Blanton's Blog

Here's A TIP I just picked up from AR support:

If it has been more than 24 hours and your personalized domain is NOT WORKING:

Go into your AR Blog setup page, and disable the custom domain section and save.
(just uncheck the "enable" box)

Then go back in and re-enable it and save once again. This will clear the bug issue
that was discovered over the weekend and stored in your browsers memory.

Make sure you don't add in the http:// or the www, to the domain name, just enter
the domain name ONLY: ie: JeremyBlanton.com

So if you're one of those still waiting, this WILL be the process that will fix it.

Also check this post of mine: http://activerain.com/blogsview/572759/Active-Rain-Outside-Blogs

Posted by Cheryl Johnson on 06/29/2008 12:20 PM

Comments (83)

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Originally posted at: Random thoughts on art, technology, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate: AR Outside Blog - Nameservers

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83 Comments on AR Outside Blog - Nameservers

JUN

2008

good job... I will have to go back and take care of this . bookmarking it now

Hi Cheryl...I'm up the creek also. And I have a webmaster. I sent him the posts from Brad and Jonathon. Still no luck. I guess he (my webmaster) does not think it can link (or whatever) to my blog that is on my web site.

I need help too. I have two outside blogs plus what I post here and it is too much. I neglect my other blogs and really send so much time here. It will really help if I can just consolidate to just one outside blog and AR.

Good luck.

Kathleen

Cheryl, I took a look at kathleen's website and it is different then the one I use. I hadn't tried to link yet b/c I am not sure how I want to. probably look at it over the weekend. thanks for the heads up. cw

Kathleen and Cheryl W

Here are some official Active Rain announcements on their new "Outside Blog" feature

http://activerain.com/blogsview/535622/ActiveRain-Launches-Outside-Blogs

http://activerain.com/blogsview/567743/Duplicate-Content-and-Outside

http://activerain.com/blogsview/567937/Outside-Blogs-Known-Issues

It's not like I don't have other blogs out there :-) ... but I do like what they've done with allowing you to make anything you've already posted on AR show up on the AR Outside Blog.

.....On the other hand, didn't I see somewhere that AR was goig to offer domain name registration? Can't find it now.

Cheryl - One of the AR guys mentioned earlier today that no, they are not offering domain name registration. Apparently they did consider it, though.

I bought my GoDaddy URL tonight. No luck yet (OK, it's only been an hour...) I kept thinking maybe I left something out. Was glad to see your post.

We have the names registered now we need to go through the process thanks for the info.

Cheryl, this is good. Love your tutorials....so visually interesting and clear. I also have a few extra names as well, but thinking about trying to keep one I already have and use. Thanks,

JUN

2008

...The problem is as this morning, the mapping still isn't working.....

I am glad to see I am not alone....

I just had an idea ... On GoDaddy, I reset the nameservers back to the default, and changed the cname record instead (to cjheretoday.activerain.com)

I'll give it a couple hours and see.

If that doesn't work then I'll try changing both the nameservers and the cname record ... if that doesn't work, then I'm all out of ideas. :-)

Later: It's not like its the most important thing in my world .... but geeks ~do~ tend to obsess when tech stuff doesn't work.....

Still later: The cname thing was an idea... but not the right one. :-)

I've reset the nameservers back to ns1.agentspaces.com and ns2.agentspaces.com and will continue to wait.....

Is it possible that maybe too many ActiveRainers all purchased domain names from URL within too short of a time and GoDaddy is struggling to catch up? Just a thought.

I still keep thinking I forgot something important. Using the custom name servers, we don't have to have hosting, too. Do we?

@Don ... No, you don't need to buy the hosting package, just the domain name, and then reset the nameservers (in theory)...

I keep thinking that I've missed something too ... but I done these before with wordpress.com sites without a hitch. Maybe something isn't quite ready to rock 'n roll on the Active Rain end.

Ya know, we all could just say oh h*ll with it, and just FORWARD the frolickin' name.... :-)

Cheryl, I went in over 72 hours ago and set the domain servers too. I was wondering if AR is busy, or do they have to accept? I have not waited that long either. I'll follow your post as I know you will let us know.

I'm glad I found your blog, since I did what you did but no luck either. I just called go daddy and they said that Active Rain has to accept them. Maybe they meant 72 business hours. lol

Very frustrating to say the least. Did you call anyone at active rain

Judy -- It sounds like somebody has to toggle the switch on at the A R end .... has anybody emailed Jon or Matt yet?

Hi Cheryl - I know the guys were checking for issues regarding this yesterday, I have seen a couple others that are working, here's Dawns: http://www.dawnsold.com/, it seems to be working fine. I will be following this closely to make sure it's running smoothly. If there are any updates or changes, you'll know by staying connected to the posts mentioned above. Thanks for your patience, and as more of these get setup and running, I'll be sharing them in a post I'm doing next. Let me know when yours activates so I can add you to the list. Thanks. :-)

Brad: I just looked. Dawn's is forwarded. Click on any of the post titles -- the URL address bar continues to display just the http://www.dawnsold.com .... instead of http://www.dawnsold.com/post title

I think I'll just forward mine for now, too......

I took the easy way out too, pending further kink removal :-)

I just changed it to forwarding and masking (instead of mapping) http://www.cjheretoday.com/

Talked w/GoDaddy tonight...said problem is within AR...so, just gonna have to wait it out...

Hopefully this is just a minor server glitch today instead of a major issue down the road. At least with this many Rainers involved in the process, it's sure to get the AR Team's attention (with or without Google Alerts!).

JUN

2008

Funny to imagine a bunch of Rainers all calling GoDaddy at once yesterday .... and some poor tech support person thinking **WTF**???

Alto I have several domains registered there, and several hosted there, I've never called GoDaddy... and I'm curious .... is their tech support offshore? Do they usually know what they are doing? Just wondering.

Cheryl... is mine right? I don't think I have a clue what mapping is and I thought reading this and other stuff yesterday that I did not have a clue what I am doing.... again. As usual. I think I have a website that is forwarded and masked because I threw in the towel a year or two ago and just never went back.

DiscoverColumbusOH.com my photos are all messed up... but I think the domain shows the entry so I did not mask???

@Maureen: Cool! It's working perfectly!

And it's mapped. Click on one of the post titles, so only that one post is on the screen. See how the URL address bar then shows both the blog name and the title of the post ... like this http://discovercolumbusoh.com/post/539179/Plagiarism-happens

If it's just forwarded and masked; only http://discovercolumbusoh.com/ would show, no matter what was clicked on, even outside links.

Where is discovercolumbusOH registered? GoDaddy or somewhere else?

GoDaddy... so somehow it worked for me. I think I did it on Friday morning. I know it was not working Sat AM but I never went back to see until just now.

@Maureen that's encouraging! I just went back into GoDaddy, took off the forwarding and reset the nameservers. Let's see how long it takes. (Timestamp: This is Sunday, 6/29, not quite 5AM PDT)

my domain www.judygreenberg.com is not working yet and its been over 72 hours. Now when I type it in it says http 404 not found.

Cheryl - I just checked mine: SuwaneeTalk.com and it works. It has been 48 hours.

Janice

It's working! It's working! www.FabRealEstateBlog.com

I saw that Lenn Harley's was working last night, so I was encouraged. As of this morning, mine is working.

@Don: YAAAY!! So, how long did it take, all together for yours?

Cheryl mine is working !!

http://AnnArborUndressed.com

Feel free to delete, just wanted you to know.

2Missy -- I don't mind the links. Good to know its working!!

Cheryl - I set mine up late Friday night. It was working as of this morning - about 36 hours.

I see that many are working today. I made my purchase at godaddy on Thursday night and I still am not live. I have never had to do this myself so I will go and look at godaddy again to make sure I have things right. hmmm - will be watching.

I'm at 48 hours with no luck, in fact getting a 404 on my http://www.HuntingLandIowa.com domain now. Keeping my fingers crossed

Cool to have this featured. I am like Jason - will hit 72 hours today at 5pm. I am getting the 404 which is better than yesterday. I am good on the godaddy end. So question - on the AR set up after checking the "enable" box how do you type in your site - do you need the www. or is it just http:// ? Maybe that is my problem. I am sure that is stupid to ask - but well DOH! :)

you all probably know this but I just noticed on Jonathan's blog

Outstanding Issues:

New issue - DNS rerouting does not seem to be working correctly. We found one bug and fixed it, but that did not seem to solve the problem. This is of highest priority and we will keep you updated. (This is the reason some custom domain names are not working yet)

Well, as y'all probably know, I got out of line when I changed to forwarding (which did work fine). I changed back to dns mapping, this AM, so now I am patiently waiting at the end of the line again.

Thanks, Maureen, I hadn't checked Jon's blog yet. Off there now.

mine is up and running, took about 48 hours,

Maureen, thanks for the reminder - I just got so excited when I saw some working - I need to be patient! I am not good at that :)

Well, I didn't figure it out right away, but NOW i realize you have to host it to have it show up.

Another thing for me to figure out. Technology just keeps going at warp speed.

Thank you for the valuable information.....and it worked.

www.nancydoesmortgages.com

Cheryl, I haven't even started work on that blog yet but I already own so many domains, I can put one to good use finally. Mine are just pointing to my site all this time, I am worried about Google seeing it as some sort of Spamming as they relate to New York City or Manhattan instead of my existing site relating to "Long Island."

Carole - You actually don't need to do any work on the AR Outside Blog. Everything you've ever publicly posted on AR is already there automatically ... And now when you write new posts, down at the bottom of the posting page, there's a box to check to add the post to your "outside blog" just the same way you would add it to a group.

Go take a look. From your Active Rain "My HOme" page, just click Out Blogs in the upper left hand column.

You can view a tutorial on how to setup a domain name for your AR outside blog from http://www.activerain.com/blogsview/571912/Setup-a-domain-for

Hope this helps some.

I used godaddy.com also and just ended up 'forwarding' it to the activerain blog.

Having the same problems with GoDaddy set up. It's been 72 hours for me already and nothing yet.

Waiting for a solution! :-)

I guess I'll wait a few days before I do mine. That will make it smoother.

Mine is finally working, It took a while but finally resolves! Yeah!

JUN

2008

I got mine from GoDaddy a while back and set up the nameservers as soon as thery were made available. My AR outside blog site has been working for a couple days now: NewHomesAZ.com ... however if you want an email address to match your domain it's a little bit tougher, it involves an mx record change - my email sometimes works- but usually doesn't. We'll see how it plays out. I have to hand it to AR... this could be an outstandingly easy way for many of us.

Cheryl, I was part of the beta group for the new sites last year sometime. I had this very problem last year, niether AR or Godaddy were able to resolve it. I re-did it again earlier today. Still nothing.

Mine was still not working today on huntinglandiowa.com and a comment above made me think of something.

I tried my domain again and still nothing, got the 404 again.

Then I went into my control panel to see how I had entered it. I had entered www.huntinglandiowa.com in the box. I took the www. off of it, saved changed.

I then went and loaded the page again and there it was, worked perfect, I was up and running. Not sure if its a coincidence, it was only 45 seconds between attempts but it works perfect without the www. on the front of the domain.

All I have entered in the box is huntinglandiowa.com

And another point .... with some host services, you are told to wait until the name "resolves" before "enabling" it ......

Here on Active Rain, the name didn't "resolve" UNTIL I "enabled" it.

So for anyone who is waiting for your domain name to resolve before checking the "enabled" box, go back and check it now, and see what happens. (There's nothing to lose!)

http://www.cjheretoday.com is finally a live site. :-)

Yeah!!!! Jason... thanks so much! That's exactly what I did. The moment I took off www, my site went live!!! THANK YOU Jason and THANK YOU Cheryl for getting this resolved for me!!!

Jason and Cheryl - I think we are the last 3 that couldn't get this to work. I did enable first and had it entered like you show above. But then I didn't wait and went and added the WWW and then took off the WWW and put in http - so now with your screen shot Cheryl and Jason's comment

I AM NOW LIVE!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU -

www.beyondbremertonrealestate.com

Brad needs to come over and read these instructions for his tutorial. I think I have enough geek in me that it messed me up on the "over thinking" part :)

Thank you, Jason ...... I would have still been waiting for the name to resolve before checking "enabled" .... You gave me the idea to just go back and check it anyway .... Leave it to a Hawkeye!!!! :-)

More here: http://activerain.com/blogsview/572759/Active-Rain-Outside-Blogs

JASON SMITH IS A FREAKING GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am now live too.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its been so long since I set this blog up I don't remember how I choose the color of the background. It is too dark. Anbody know how to change it?

Thanks,

Laurie

@Laurie Ya just gotta chuckle: Here we are... dare I say ... a bunch of heavy hitters in the RE.net world, and we're all getting so totally jazzed .... do a happy dance in the hall ... party time ... WHOO WHOOO!!! Celebrate!!!! Over what is basically a simple template site ... hehehehehe ...

Don't get me wrong .... I'm not complainin'.... I'm doing a happy dance, too .... I'm just sayin'

But then, Active Rain is ~~~family~~~ :-) :-) :-)

Cheryl you are awesome! Thanks for setting me straight on the phone. For some reason, I was a lttle mixed up with what to put in the box. Then you told me to take off the www. and the http. Now it works and I am the happiest person alive... So I'm a little crazy. www.judygreenberg.com is alive!!!!

I owe you and so should the rest of Active Rain.

@Laurie -- Looks like you customized it with Brad Carroll's customizer ... I think you could just go back there http://www.activeraincustomizer.com/ log in (hopefully you will remember you password :-) ) and change background, or whatever setting you want to change...

Thanks Cheryl

@Judy ... That was fun! Just the sound of your voice when the d#mned thing finally worked... OMG! OMG!

Hey Laurie can I get you to tell my wife that :)

Chery, It wasn't from Brads site. That customized the AR blog (and slowed it down a lot). This was off of the customizable outside blog. Can't find that control.

lol @ Jason.............

JUL

2008

@ Laurie ... Down near the bottom of your AR blog's right hand column it has the little "Designed using the Active Rain Blog Customizer" icon

Just humor me, and click the customizer "Get Started" button anyway, sign in, and see if uploading a new background image there doesn't do the trick .... And if it doesn't work. ... well, hey, :-)

For most the initial hurdle is over with. Now......... has anybody gotten a visit from Google to index their new Outside Blog? I just checked and they have not added me yet. I was hoping being associationed with AR we may get a quick visit.

And my other question ... is Brad Carroll rolling out a customizer for Outside Blogs? :-)

This is G o o g l e's cache of http://discovercolumbusoh.com/ as retrieved on Jun 30, 2008 05:13:18 GMT.
G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.
The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting.
This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only.
To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:H7diTVu2VI8J:discovercolumbusoh.com/+site:discovercolumbusoh.com&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content.
Does that mean Google stopped by yesterday?

Maureen McCabe Columbus Ohio real estate (Real Living HER - HER Realtors)

8:19am • #72

Well that gives me hope Maureen, when was your live and did you use Google submit or did it just pick it up from AR?

I never thought to submit to Google...

I know it was live Sunday AM. I had checked Saturday AM and my blog was not showing with the URL yet. I had just bought the url on Friday AM so that is darn quick.

Cheryl - Mine was live as of Sunday morning. Google Alerts started picking it up as of yesterday (Monday). Not too bad?

Cheryl - As I understand it from Brad and Jon is that they will create a third template for the outside blogs - one with a wider width to match the width of the AR blogs. They'll work on that once they get the initial bugs out.

They may create more templates in the future, but that may be something they charge for.

Cheryl, I went to the AR customizer, it is not connected to the outside blog. I did figure out why the text was missing from the outside blog though. When the background went dark, it changed to the same color as the text, so I changed the text color. At least it is readable now.

I sent an email to Brad Andersohn. Maybe he will figure it out.

Thanks for your help.

@Laurie -- Duh!!!! I didn't realize you were talking about your outside blog!!! I'd like to see a customizer for the outside blogs.

JUL

2008

Cher, as always, an excellent post! Congrats on your feature at Club Chaos! Enjoy your day. Regards, C.

Featured @ Club Chaos

One of the advantages of starting a few days later than the rest of you is that I get the benefit of bug fixes and your excellent comments. My domain name came up first try within seconds of modifying the name servers at my domain registrar (netaliases.com, by the way). So thank you all for leaving the lights on.

I will be happier when they give us a bit more control over appearance and the side bar - but this is still a beta product, recently launched. All things considered, I thought AR did a great job of the launch.

Cheryl - if you used the forwarding capability (cname record) would you change the way the search engines look at you and diminish your effectiveness ? (would the google juice flow to the forwarded name or to the name it forwarded to)

Ted, Yes, nothing like being on the bleeding edge. :-)

Since I don't know the answer re Google/forwarding, I was really happy when the mapping started working...

JUL

2008

My Outside Blog finally cached yesterday

This is G o o g l e's text-only cache of http://www.cjheretoday.com/ as retrieved on Jul 2, 2008 03:04:03 GMT.
G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.
The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting.
Click here for the full cached page with images included.

So it went live on June 30, 1:10PM, and was cached by Google on July 2 3:30PM ... just about 50 hours.

JUL

2008

It took about 3 days for Google to pick me up but all is working great now.

This is G o o g l e's cache of http://huntinglandiowa.com/ as retrieved on Jul 2, 2008 05:42:20 GMT.
G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.
The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting.
This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only.
To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Q8nC1peUC6cJ:huntinglandiowa.com/+www.huntinglandiowa.com&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

Jason Smith (DreamDirt Auction)

9:44pm • #85

This blog does not allow anonymous comments

Cheryl Johnson

Highland Park, CA

More about me…

Cheryl Johnson, Bob Taylor Properties, Inc., Los Angeles, CA

Address: 5526 N. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90042

Office Phone: (323) 257-1080

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