Finally, My Ordeal with Blogger and Google Apps is Over!

After spending probably ten hours over the last month trying to get this blog up the fruits of my labor are what you see here.  I at first heard about the custom domain feature which Blogger provides on Lifehacker.com, and combined with my desire to have my own blog I set out on this quest of sorts.  

All went well registering with Name.com for a website already configured with Google Apps.  I even found a coupon that saved me a few bucks.  But, that isn't what this post is about.  After fiddling around with Google Apps and getting the start page up with that service I went to blogger and made a blog that no longer exists because of this problem.  I set up a CNAME server to point to ghs.google.com and had Blogger point this blog to DSRJR.com.  Then I waited the two, three days and still nothing.  At this point I became frustrated with my inability to accomplish this seamingly easy task.  Over the next few weeks I fiddled with some solutions eventually causing Blogger to think that there was already a blog hosted at www.DSRJR.com, which is where I wanted this blog to show up.  

That leads me up to just a few minutes ago.  After spending another few hours trying to find a solution I finally decided to wade through the Google support forums and FINALLY found a solution that worked.  All credit goes to those forum users for the solution that I will list here:

1. Change CName records to www. and point to ghs.google.com

2. Enable the startpage service in Google Apps to publish a sample page

3. After the sample page shows up on your desired webpage (example: www.DSRJR.com) disable the start page service.

4. Point your blog at Blogger to your custom domain

So, in four easy steps I solved a month's worth of problems.  Thanks to those forums users at the Blogger Help Group.  I'd still be pulling my hair out if not for you guys.

Blogger has a tutorial for pointing your blog to a custom domain here.  Scroll down to Update your Blogger Settings to accomplish step number 4 above.

(post may be edited in the future with more details)