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Sunday 2 September 2012

Too easy

Recently, I sorted out a problem that's been niggling at me for a while. My blog was at drsolly.blogspot.com and I wanted it to be at blog.drsolly.com. A small thing, but it's kind of neater. Google make it possible to do that, and give simple instructions. If you don't have your own domain name, they tell you exactly what to do. If you have your own domain name and the registrar is Godaddy (one of the commonest registrars), they likewise make it very simple. If your registrar is someone else (and the registrar is doing your DNS for you), it's also pretty easy. What they don't tell you, is how to do it if you're doing your own DNS, which is what I do. OK, I suppose that the number of bloggers doing that is less than 1 in a thousand. but even so. I had to read their various instructions, very carefully, and deduce that what I needed was to add to the DNS file: blog.drsolly.com. IN CNAME ghs.google.com. Why didn't they tell me that? It's part of a wider issue. A lot of people give you the idiot instructions for doing something when you don't know what you're doing. But they don't give you the "expert" instructions for what to do when you do know what you're doing. I do appreciate that there's more idiots than experts, but all it takes is a link "Experts click here" and a very short page saying "Edit your DNS file to add blog.drsolly.com. IN CNAME ghs.google.com." and restart named. Even worse, is when you're given instructions in "Noddy language", whereby they carefully avoid using the correct technical terms (which I understand) in favour of using made-up Noddy language, which could mean anything, and I have to guess what they mean. OK, I can see that using the correct terminology will scare some people, but again, why can't they do an "Experts click here" that gives you the explanation in accurate technical terms?

1 comment:

  1. OMG! Dr Solly, Doesnt know something about computers!! Well ok, hosting etc then. But must admit didnt realise you had swapped i come thru google with a "Dr solly blog" search and you are always on the top, although a quick check shows me i must be being redirected from Drsolly.blogspot.com

    Question, if you want to host it on your server why not use a blogging platform like Wordpress!!

    Yours
    Confused from Chesham

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