Custom domain and moving a blog

Amy1238

Hi all,

Please feel free to move this if I selected the wrong forum!

I'm trying to figure out how difficult it will be to move my blog, currently Blogger, to my own hosting, and still maintain my custom domain with my smugmug site.

Here's my current set up:
- I have my domain through GoDaddy. I currently have the CNAME stuff configured so that amybethphotography.com successfully points to my smugmug site, and I've prettied up all my links on my site to remove the smugmug urls.

- I have a blogger blog with a blogspot domain name.

- I have no hosting for anything related to the above.

I have used Hostgator in the past for non-photography sites and I like their customer service and cPanel administration. Therefore, I plan on hosting my blog with them (Hostgator).

When I sign up for hosting with Hostgator, they will ask for the domain name. I plan on planting my blog at amybethphotography.com/blog. Am I still going to be able to have the main site, amybethphotography.com, point to smugmug? Will I have to do this in my Hostgator control panel or on GoDaddy?

Help! Even just typing this out makes my brain hurt, which is why I've been putting this off for so long. I have familiarity with Wordpress, and can't wait to get off Blogger, but I worry that just switching this around is going to be troublesome.

denisegoldberg

Why not use http://blog.amybethphotography.com for your blog?

You can easily set that up at blogger - http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/topic.py?topic=12451, with the appropriate settings on your domain host. The blog stays at blogger, your photos stay at smug, everything works.

--- Denise

Amy1238

denisegoldberg wrote:

Why not use http://blog.amybethphotography.com for your blog?

You can easily set that up at blogger - http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/topic.py?topic=12451, with the appropriate settings on your domain host. The blog stays at blogger, your photos stay at smug, everything works.

--- Denise

I want to get off of Blogger both for SEO reasons, and because I far prefer the Wordpress interface to Blogger's. I had a personal blog for years using Wordpress, and it's much easier for me to quickly and without headache adjust templates with Wordpress.

denisegoldberg

No matter which blog type you use, I believe your only option is http://<yourBlogName>.amybethphotography.com. The /blog will look for a category on your smugmug site.

--- Denise

Amy1238

denisegoldberg wrote:

No matter which blog type you use, I believe your only option is http://<yourBlogName>.amybethphotography.com. The /blog will look for a category on your smugmug site.

--- Denise

That's fine. I guess my question then becomes this:

When I sign up for hosting with Hostgator, they will ask for the domain name. I plan on planting my blog at blog.amybethphotography.com. Am I still going to be able to have the main site, amybethphotography.com, point to smugmug? Will I have to do this in my Hostgator control panel or on GoDaddy?

I'm not so concerned about where I'm going to put it, just how I'm going to have to reconfigure the CNAME stuff, and where I'll have to do it (GoDaddy vs. Hostgator).

As I mentioned, when I sign up for hosting, whoever I pick will have me put in my desired domain name. Whether I end up putting my blog at blog.domainname or journal.domainname or whatever, I still have to log that main domain name with the host.

So my question is then will I change anything at GoDaddy, or will it be at Hostgator, and how complicated is all of that.

I'm clearly not asking the right question. I think what I actually should do is what I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm going to put up a clean, simple portfolio html site and host that and everything else at hostgator. I'll just keep smugmug for client proofing only, and not worry about the custom domain.