I’ve been blogging about online tech tips and support specialists for years now, but I really can’t use them to post random thoughts, ideas, links, notes, etc. as they are made up of more professional content. This is why two days ago I decided to create another blog using the domain name aseemkishore.com, which I bought many years ago. I ended up installing it on Tumblr, which I really like as it is very easy to use and looks great.
The whole process took me about 10 minutes. I’m adding another 20 minutes to tell you how to do this because you might have to spend 10 minutes buying a domain name and 10 minutes getting used to GoDaddy’s interface a bit. If you have a domain name, you can probably also set up a website with Tumblr in 10 minutes. I’m going to use GoDaddy for the domain name and Tumblr for the website’s content management system. Of course, you can customize websites in a variety of ways, but the key is to go from no domain name to a fully functional website in 20 minutes.
1. Buy your domain name
You can buy a domain name anywhere, but I have mine on GoDaddy.com, so I’ll show you the steps specific to that site. You can probably get a cheaper domain name somewhere else, and the process for buying a domain name isn’t really all that different, so get it anywhere. If you already have a domain name for which you want to set up a website, skip to the next section. Go to GoDaddy.com and enter your desired domain name. If it is available, you will receive a congratulations message on the following page:
Go ahead and click the Buy Now button. On the next page, you will be able to select a domain name term, which by default is 2 years. The current domain name price on GoDaddy is $ 12.49 per year. Go ahead and click the “Checkout” button on the right:
Enter your billing information and choose a payment method. Then just click “Checkout”. You will need to create a GoDaddy account in order to manage your domain and change settings, but first, let’s set up the interface.
2. Set up a Tumblr blog
Now go to Tumblr.com and click the Sign Up button at the top. Go ahead, enter your email address, password and username.
You will receive an email with a confirmation link. Click on it and you will be logged into your Tumblr account. You will now have an untitled blog by default. The url will be username.tumblr.com. Now, in order to associate everything with your personal domain name, you need to click on “Settings” (the gear icon) at the top and then click “Untitled” under “Applications”. In the screenshot below, this is my name because I renamed the blog from Untitled to Aseem Kishore.
Select the “Use your own domain name” checkbox and enter the domain name you just purchased. Don’t click the Check Your Domain button yet, as we haven’t configured your domain name settings yet. That’s all you have to do on Tumblr, the rest in GoDaddy.
3. Configure DNS settings
To set up your own domain name to work with Tumblr, all you have to do is change one setting for your domain. This is why it is so easy and fast. Tumblr has an FAQ page on how to do this, but I’ll walk you through how to do it, since it’s the only semi-difficult part of the whole process.
First, go to GoDaddy.com and click on MyAccount in the top left corner after signing in.
Then click Domains to manage your domain or domains.
A list of domains will appear at the bottom, and on the right you will see a “Run” button.
You will now be taken to the domain details page, which looks pretty boring if you don’t understand what that means. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know anything about this. What you need to do is launch the DNS Manager found at the bottom.
This is where the magic happens. There are two ways to get this setting to work. One way is to edit a record called an A record. Another way is to add a CNAME record. Don’t worry about what that means, it’s not worth the effort. Why are there two ways? Well, if you edit the A record, then your website URL is domainname.com. If you want www (www.domainname.com) in front, you need to use a CNAME record. It’s just a matter of your preference.
If you follow the path of modifying the A record, entering www.domainname.com will just redirect to the non-www version. I made mine using writing method A. To do this, click on the little pencil icon in the Dots box under the heading A (Host).
Change any IP address to 66.6.44.4. This is the IP address of Tumblr. That’s all you need to do. Now you just wait a few hours and you can visit your domain name and it should load your Tumblr blog! If you really want this www to be in front, change the CNAME record. If you scroll down you will see www.
Click the pencil icon in the Points to www field and change the value to domains.tumblr.com. This is it. Note that you only need to do one thing, not both at the same time. I’m not entirely sure what happens if you make both an A record and a CNAME record, but I’m not going to try this, and it’s not recommended.
That’s it: a super fast way to quickly go from a website without a website to a great looking one. Tumblr isn’t for everyone, but it has a very handy feature – you just need to change one entry in your DNS settings to make it work with your own domain name. If you run into problems or have a better way than what I did, please leave a comment and let us know. Enjoy!
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