Domain: Purchasing a new one

When I first started this blog I had to get a domain name in order to attach a more personal URL to my blog.

As time went by I realized I wanted a .se domain but it was already taken.

If you find yourself in the same situation you can go to who.is and search for the domain you want.

Here you will see how long it has existed for, when it is bound to expire and most importantly when you can buy it.

The release date is also the day when you can purchase it on, I contacted the current host just in case but they could not provide me with much more information than what is already public.

Next I went to the organisation that is responsible for the .se top domain. Here I received information about which hour it is released. In my case very early in the morning (even with the summer time).

Now it was just a matter of waiting until the right time, I tested two hosting providers but they were not synced. Finally I found a Swedish provider where I could buy the domain with no issues.

So my advice is: do your research, set your calendar and alarm, and make sure your credit card is working.

Blogger and One.com hosting

Using Blogger with hosting on One.com

This post is as much for you as it is for me.

When setting up this blog I was looking around for information on how to host a blog on my own domain using Blogger with my One.com hosting.

Step by step I did the following.

1. Bought hosting on One.com, just a basic package really. If you want to buy your own domain you could use my referral link.
   
   
2. Initially I had a website builder on One.com but since I was really just after a blog I was more familiar with Blogger.com so I had to clear out the site linked to my domain on the hosting site.
   
   
3. After making sure the domain was free I had to connect my the domain to the blog, this was done on the hosting site in their DNS settings. With the help of their support team I managed to connect two CNAME records to the addresses that Blogger provides. One general and one unique connected to me.
   
   
4. The changes took around an hour to load, after that I entered my custom domain in the Blogger settings (again). If you haven't updated your settings in the hosting it will simply not work.
   
   
5. The next issue I ran into was that entering "erikengstrom.net" in my browser did not take me to "www.erikengstrom.net". Google didn't allow so called naked domains, so it had to have the "www" top domain in the URL to my blog. When entering the naked domain in the browser, I was taken to an empty site as they are really considered two separate sites.
   
   To fix the issue of having to write "www.yourblog.com" all the time instead of just writing "yourblog.com" do the following:
   
   
   • Open file manager on One.com
   • Create a file named .htaccess
   • Edit that file and enter:
     #Rewrite to domain with www
     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.+\.)([a-zA-Z0-9-]+\.([a-z]{2,4})|co\.uk|me\.uk|org\.uk|priv\.no)$
     RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ([a-zA-Z0-9-]+\.([a-z]{2,4})|co\.uk|me\.uk|org\.uk|priv\.no)$
     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%1/$1 [L,QSA,R=301]
   • Save
     
     
   This fixed the issue right away, I visited the site again and used ctrl+f5 to force reload the page, and just like that it worked.