Domain Mapping and Email for Existing Website
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For years I have had a website called freebaran.org. The domain register is 123-domain-register and the web site is hosted by KATenterprises.
I recently discovered wordpress and recreated my website at freebaran.wordpress.com. I then purchased mapping to map freebaran.org to freebaran.wordpress.com.
I tried to follow the instructions for transferring my old email addresses via Google Apps. However, when I went to my records at 123-domain-register, I couldn’t get at my MX records. Total DNS was turned off with the notation, “Not hosted here.”
I contacted technical support at 123-Domain-Register and they told me that either wordpress.com would have to make the changes or give me access to my MX records. This didn’t sound quite right. As an alternative, they suggested parking the domain at 123-Domain-Register and resetting the host to point to wordpress.com. I could then edit my MX records.
I did this and everything works fine. The one minor glitch is that when you link to freebaran.org, freebaran.wordpress.com shows up in the browser address bar. I don’t really care. But I wonder if I could have done this differently.
-Bob Chatelle
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Have you looked at this? http://faq.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/gmail-mx/
As you have discovered, once you point your domain to wordpress.com, you lose the ability to edit the information at the original host. And you don’t have access to that information here.
Here is the alternative I generally suggest: map a subdomain to your wordpress.com blog instead of the top-level domain. This gives you access to all the records for your domain host (in this case, 123-domain-register) while not having the redirection issue you mention above.
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Yes, I read that. I have no interest in editing the information at my original host. My old web space is going away permanently. (I will keep it around for a month or so, just to be safe.) If I really need to get at it, I can temporarily reset the nameservers. But I don’t think this is at all likely.
What I needed access to was the MX records. And I got that by parking my domain at 123-domain-register.
I needed to map the top level domain, because that is what all the existing links — including the links in search engines — point to.
The way things are now works just fine. There is the minor glitch of what appears in the browser window. I was wondering if I might have been able to do something to avoid that. But I’m quite content to leave well enough alone.
-Bob
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Actually, I think it is now all set. During the transition, I had a problem with a loop because I had put a redirect record at the old web site to transfer people to the blog. To avoid the loop, I changed the direction of the mapping at wordpress. But the old web site is now unreachable. So I changed the mapping back to the way it was.
Incidentally, I know realize that it was not necessary to park the domain and make complicated manual changes to the MX records. I’m quite sure that wordpress does all that for you when you enable Google MX. I went astray by trying to follow the instructions from Google.
I will now unpark my domain and set the nameservers back to wordpress. If I have a problem, I will disable and reenable Google MX.
-Bob
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I’m not sure if I’m the only one to have been led into unnecessary work by following the Google App instructions. Perhaps you might revise your FAQ to let people know that they do not have to manually update MX records because wordpress does that for them when they click on enable Google MX.
Just a suggestion.
-Bob
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