Basics Of Domain Mapping

Domain mapping is an important part of web hosting. Domain mapping includes linking a site with a custom web address name such as www.myorganization.com (an imaginary domain name), rather than as a sub domain of the host’s domain name such as www.serviceprovider.com/myorganization or myorganization.serviceprovider.com. When this is done, when a user types www.myorganization.com in the browser URL, they will be redirected to your site. A web address can be mapped to any section of your application or a specific web page.

There are basically two steps involved in domain mapping:
1)      Service providers (e.g. Google, GoDaddy) need to enable the facility for domain mapping
2)      The client needs to update the DNS registry

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Domain Mapping with Google

If your site is created through the Google App Engine, only the site administrator can map a site to a custom URL through the Google App Engine’s control pane. To do that:
1)      Go to control panel in Google Apps and click on Sites
2)      Select the tab ‘Web Address Mapping’ from the Site Settings section
3)      Click on ‘Add a New Web Address’ and enter the name of the site to be mapped to the new URL
4)      Add the Sub URL to be mapped to the site in the Web Address section
5)      Finally, select ‘Add Mapping’ which will provide the necessary information to proceed with the mapping.
Note that it will take up to 24 hours for the changes to apply to your site.

Possible Errors with Mapping

You are likely to encounter the following errors while trying to map your site to a custom web address:
1)      ‘Address already used’
This error comes when the custom domain address you have specified is already mapped to another site. To resolve this, verify that it’s unique and you have spelt it correctly. If it’s not unique you will have to select another unique website address.
2)      ‘Domain name is not verified’
This error comes when you haven’t yet verified the domain name with Google.
This is requested for security purposes, especially to avoid spamming.

Domain Mapping with WordPress

If you have a blog at WordPress which uses a URL in the format myblog.wordpress.com, you can map it to your own domain name such as myblog.com. When this is done, even when a user tries to access myblog.wordpress.com, it will automatically be redirected to myblog.com. However, with WordPress, you have to purchase domain mapping separately as it’s a paid upgrade from WordPress. Once you purchase the mapping facility, you can upgrade the settings of your WordPress site to be mapped to the new URL. WordPress provides support for custom web addresses with the following extensions.

• .Com
• .net
• .org
• .me

Domain mapping is usually available at a small yearly fee of around 10 USD to 15 USD, but the growth of your website’s traffic which you will due to the availability of your website or blog on your own custom domain are worth the price. As soon your blog is all set, you are going to benefit from the content you have on your blog.

Jack Jameson enjoys sharing useful tips about registering and mapping domains (interesting to know is that the Danish term is domæne) in various online communities. His favorite web hosting company is based in Denmark and called UnoEuro.