Blogger is a platform where an aspiring writer can start their writing journey without much focus on technical things like domain names, hosting, etc. However, the default domain name provided by Blogger may not fully reflect the identity of your blog, and users may have a hard time remembering your blog URL. This guide illustrates the steps that you should follow to add a custom domain from Freenom to your blogger blog for FREE so that you can have a custom URL with zero cost which better reflects what your blog stands for.
Please note that the domains and blogs I’ve used below for illustrations have been deleted for privacy concerns, by the time you are reading this
Register a Custom Domain Name
First things first. Head over to Freenom.com and sign up for an account. After that, go to Register a New Domain under the Services dropdown.
Go to “Register a New Domain” under Services
Search for your domain to see if it’s available. Here, For example, I have searched for a better domain.
Search for your domain name to see if it’s available
Then, a set of results as follows should be displayed. Select the domain that you want, by clicking on the Get it now button next to the domain name. As shown in the following screenshot, I have selected the domain better domain. ml. Please note that sometimes, the domain name you want may be unavailable. In that case, unfortunately, you will have to pick up what’s been left or start over the whole process with another name you prefer.
After selecting the domains you want, click on Checkout.
Select the domain that you want
Now, you will see something as shown in the following image. You have to select the period for which you want your domain name for free. Here, I have selected 1 month for free. Don’t worry, you can always renew your domain when it’s about to be expired. After setting the preferred period, click Continue.
Select the period and press Continue
We have come to the final steps of ordering a custom domain now. Agree to their terms & conditions and click Complete Order.
Complete the order
To see the domain that you registered, select My Domains under the Services dropdown. You can see your domain is displayed there.
See your registered domain under “My Domains”
Since a domain name has been registered, now, it’s time to go to your blogger blog. Don’t forget that we have to come again here to set up DNS settings. Let’s come into that part later in this guide.
Add the Domain Name to Your Blogger Site
Go to the Settings of your blog and click on Custom Domain
Type in the domain name that we registered with Freenom (prefix it with www.), and click Save. Then you will encounter an error like below. This occurs because we haven’t set up DNS for our domain yet. If someone types in our custom domain, they should be redirected to our blogger blog. For that to happen, we need to add DNS records at the domain name provider’s site.
The error message itself describes it well
Manage Your Domain’s DNS Settings
Go to My Domains under Services dropdown and click on the Manage domain button, next to the domain name you registered.
Click on the “Manage domain” button, next to the domain name you registered.
Click on Manage Freenom DNS. Add two CNAME records as shown below. You can see that the name and target fields of the records are the strings that we were provided within the error message by Blogger. Don’t forget to select Type as CNAME, otherwise, it won’t work.
Add two CNAME records
Now we have finished setting up DNS for our domain name. It takes some time to take effect. In my case, it was for about an hour. Therefore, you have to wait for some time before completing the final steps of this process on your Blogger blog.
Final Work
Since we have set up DNS by now, go to Publishing under Settings → Basic of your blog, type the domain name prefixed with www, and click Save. It should be saved without giving any error.
If it’s not, please wait some more time as DNS settings may not have been taken effect yet.
There’s an additional step to complete. Some users of your blog might type your blog URL without the “www” part, for example, typing better domain. ml instead of www. better domain. ml. Therefore, you need to set up a redirect from better domains. ml to www. better domain. ml. To do that, click on Edit next to your new domain name and check the checkbox in the resulting form, as shown in the following images.
Click on “Edit”
Check this checkbox to setup redirect
Congratulations..you did it. You now have set up your blog, to access it with a custom domain name of your choice🥳.
Hooray!!! You did it
This article explained how to add a custom domain from Freenom to your Blogger blog for free. Feel free to comment below if you face any difficulty when following along. Share with your friends so that they may also benefit from this guide😊.
Thanks for reading…🧡
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