These instructions are specific to Namecheap, my registrar, but they should point anyone who wants his or her tumblelog on a custom subdomain in the right direction.
- Log in to Namecheap and click “Manage Domains.” (If you’d like to see screenshots of the next couple of steps, check out the entry I mentioned earlier.)
- Choose the domain to which you’d like to add a subdomain for your tumblelog.
- Click “All Host Records.”
- Change the settings to match:
- Log in to Tumblr. Click “Account.” Click “Settings.” Check the custom domain name check box and enter your subdomain in the text box below.
- Done!
1. First, go to any domain registration company and buy your own domain name. I prefer using GoDaddy for buying all my domains, they are a reputable domain registrar and offer a lot of discount coupons on business as well as personal domain names.
2. Once you have bought your domain name, you have to point your domain’s DNS to Tumblr’s web server. You can always create a sub-domain on your existing site and point that sub-domain to Tumblr or create a sub-folder and use the address of the sub-folder as the home page of your Tumblr blog. To keep things simple, I will use the root directory of my site.
3. Login to your domain administration page and find “Manage your domain”. In Godaddy’s domain administration panel, click the “My Products” link available at the “My Account” drop-down menu, as shown below:
4. Click your domain name and this should open the DNS management panel along which contains some important settings such as nameserver details, domain information and contact email address.
5. Find the section “DNS manager” and click “Launch”. In some domain management panels, this link might be labelled as “Edit” or “Open”. In short, you have to open your domain’s DNS manager page and add a custom DNS record that will point to Tumblr’s web server.
6. In the “DNS manager” page, click “Add a DNS record” and enter the following IP address in the address field:
72.32.231.8
7. Click “Save Zone File”.
8. Leave everything as it is.
Do not change your domain’s name-server or add any CNAME record or remove the DNS record you have just added. It might take 48-72 hours for the DNS changes to propagate across the internet, but in general it should not take more than 3 hours. When I configured my own domain with Tumblr, it took less than an hour for the DNS changes to propagate.
9. Meanwhile, go to Tumblr’s custom domain test page and check whether the DNS changes have propagated correctly or not. If you see the message “This domain is configured correctly” you are all set to sign up for Tumblr.
If you do not see the confirmation message, give it a few more hours and check back again.
10. Now go to Tumblr’s homepage, sign up for an account and login to your Tumblr dashboard.
11. Hit the “+” button to create a new Tumblr blog, as shown below:
12. Regarding the address of your blog, choose any address as of now. You will point your custom domain to this blog and change the address in the next step.
13.Hit “Create blog” and in the next page click “Settings”.
14. In the URL field, enter the web address of your domain and click “Save changes” at the bottom of the page.
15. Congratulations, your website is now mapped with Tumblr’s web server and your Tumblr blog is ready to roll. For more details and other customizing tips, please read our earlier tip: setting up a Tumblr blog (part 1).
~Amit banerjee
