Support for OnSugar

Domain Mapping

Wed, 10/29/2008 - 2:31PM by sabs 63 Comments - 3,564 Views

What is domain mapping?
Domain mapping replaces your onsugar.com url with your custom domain name. For example, you could domain map mysite.onsugar.com to mycustomdomain.com.

How do I map my domain?
To map your domain, you need to complete the following three steps.

  1. At your domain registrar, forward yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com. Make sure you select "301 moved permanently" when you set your forwarding.
  2. Set your www CNAME to yoursite.onsugar.com
  3. Enter www.yourdomain.com into the "Custom Domain URL" field on the domain mapping page. To get to the domain mapping page, click on "Domain Mapping" in your site's dropdown menu.


Please note: be sure to change yoursite and yourdomain to the actual URLs you are trying to map.

Are there any restrictions with domain mapping?
Due to legal restrictions, we cannot offer free Getty Images to sites that do not end in onsugar.com. If you choose to map your domain to your onsugar site, you will no longer have access to our free Getty images, and will be fully responsible for any licensing of images that you publish on your blog. To learn more, read our full Terms of Service.

Additionally, due to technical restrictions, we cannot offer the ability for your commenters to post their comments directly to Facebook.

What is the difference between forwarding and mapping?
When you forward a domain, users type in yourdomain.com into their address bar and get redirected to yoursite.onsugar.com. With domain mapping, users will never see onsugar.com in the address bar.

I mapped my site, but I still see yoursite.onsugar.com in the address bar. What is happening?
Once domain mapping has occured, it will take 24 hours for all the links to forward correctly. After that period of time, yoursite.onsugar.com will begin forwarding to yourdomain.com, and your onsugar.com url will no longer appear.

Do you have GoDaddy.com specific instructions?
Yes. If you use GoDaddy.com as your site registrar and would like to map your domain, simply follow the directions below.

  1. Login to your GoDaddy account
  2. Go to "My Domains"
  3. Click on the domain you want to map.
  4. Click on the “Nameservers” icon, change it to “Parked nameservers” and then click OK (this may already be set).
  5. Click on the “Forward” icon  and then click the enable forwarding box. In the blank field type http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com and then select 301 moved permanently. When finished, click OK.
  6. Click on the “Total DNS Control and MX Records” link in the middle of the page (this might not show up until the nameservers have been set).
  7. Under the CNAMES section, find the www line and click on the pencil icon at the end of the row.
    Here you need to enter an alias name: www
    The points to host name should be: YOURURL.onsugar.com
    Change the TTL to 1/2 hour and click OK
  8. Now go back to OnSugar and click on the “Domain Mapping” link in your drop down menu. Here add www.YOURDOMAIN.com in the field and then click “Map to This Domain”
    Note: Make sure that you change YOURDOMAIN.com and YOURURL to their respective links.

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1

Is it possible to make the domain of my blog to be like this: www.mydomain.com/blog

i don't want to map my root domain to OnSugar - i just want the /blog to be mapped to Onsugar.

es posible?

Mon, 11/03/2008 - 9:13am

2

Imma new user. How do I get to my domain registrar? I simply went to domain mapping in my menu and put in my new domain. will that work? thanks.

Thu, 11/06/2008 - 12:08am

3

@xta - doing that will not work correctly, you need to do the other steps at your domain registrar (godaddy, register.com, etc.) if you only put the url in, it'll redirect incorrectly. PM me if you need help

@gla - some registrars have this capability, it will depend on your backend. If you're hosting your own domain, you may also be able to this at the server level. unfortunately it's not something we can do easily.

Thu, 11/06/2008 - 4:26pm

4

how exciting!!! once you get some privacy options, i will be back for good.

Fri, 11/07/2008 - 9:07am

5

I don't know what the heck I did, but the link to my site doesn't show up as www.arinforever.onsugar.com it shows up as www.arinforever.com...how do i change it back to a subdomain? It's changed the link everywhere I had it posted...please help!

Sat, 11/08/2008 - 3:23pm

6

AW BUT I did MY URL
MYPAGE.ONSUGAR.COM was changed to ONLY MYPAGE.COM
AND NOW YOU WANT TO COME IN MY PAGE
EDIT FOR ME OR SEE THE RESULTS APPEAR
Says SOMETHING THAT THE SERVER THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL YOU OR WHAT DOES NOT EXIST?
I am desperate and TREATY ON LEAVE THIS
And I did ONSUGAR AND OTHER SITES IN ALWAYS WANT TO DOMAIN MAPPING ME SOMETHING appears to happen SINGULAR What I AM VERY CONCERN AND ALL INFORMATION IS MY IS AHI
NEED HELP FAST D:
Will have to request another page or HOW?
ANSWERS PLEASE!

Sat, 11/08/2008 - 9:24pm

7

@arinforever and @fashionvictim911 - i'll have our dev team look into this, we're working on fixing our tool so that this doesn't happen in the future. but if you don't make the changes at your registrar first, the mapping won't work correctly as is. sorry for the inconvenience!

Sun, 11/09/2008 - 9:03am

8

And then I should change in my registration?
what should I do?
is just that I need my page
s and does not work s: Thanks for answering
resulevanme this question please!
thank you very much for the above

PS: I have another page in onsugar Start
but I need my previous pages
follow here waiting for my answer
because I need the info from my old sites web

Sun, 11/09/2008 - 1:28pm

9

Is there no need to change the Name Servers, as well? When I mapped a personal URL to my Wordpress blog, I had to change the name servers from

NS41.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS42.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

to

ns1.wordpress.com, and
ns2.wordpress.com

Sun, 11/16/2008 - 9:48am

10

Sorry, please disregard my last comment. The answer is obviously no:)

Sun, 11/16/2008 - 9:57am

11

I use the domain mapping option, and in the last day or so, I've noticed that when I go to my site, it's immediately changing the URL to sweetfinds.onsugar.com on every page. I'm 98% sure that this wasn't happening before. I also looked at some other OnSugar sites that use domain mapping, and it looks like the same thing has happened with theirs, so I am not so sure it's a problem on the end of my domain registrar. Ideas? Thanks!

Sun, 12/21/2008 - 8:54am

12

sorry for the inconvenience, this problem will be fixed this evening!

Sun, 12/21/2008 - 10:11am

13

Not an inconvenience at all. Thanks so much!Smiling

Sun, 12/21/2008 - 10:17am

14

im confused as how to do this Sad HELLPP

Mon, 12/22/2008 - 6:06pm

15

pgf - where is your domain registered with? drop me a line at help@onsugar.com and we'll get you sorted out. cheers!

Mon, 12/22/2008 - 8:02pm

16

sabs - since mapping my domain from cookbakelive.onsugar.com to cookbakelive.com, my favicon no longer shows up, it does if you type in cookbakelive.onsugar.com, but not without the onsugar...why is this & can i fix it?

Thu, 01/01/2009 - 7:41pm

17

have you tried adding your favicon again after domain mapping? that usually fixes it.

Fri, 01/23/2009 - 3:55pm

18

Is it possible to map it to a subdomain? We have a work domain set up and I was hoping that I could do blog.mac-fusion.com to point to macfusion.onsugar.com... The husband seems to think it won't work but I thought I would ask.

Mon, 03/09/2009 - 4:52pm

19

you can definitely map it to a subdomain. same thing, but instead of setting the www cname, you'd set the other cname (in your case you'd set the cname for blog). let us know if you need a hand.

Tue, 03/24/2009 - 12:31pm

20

any chance for godaddy like instructions for us mediatemple users?

Sat, 03/28/2009 - 3:55am

21

p4design - sorry i'm not familiar with mediatemple. but, if you want to email some screenshots of the interface to help@onsugar.com, we can see what we can do.

Sat, 03/28/2009 - 9:59am

22

I followed the Go Daddy instructions for Domain Mapping - both as listed on Go Daddy and Sugar's sites - and now my URL is taking me to my teamsugar.com site, instead of my blog. Why?

Thu, 04/02/2009 - 1:50pm

23

did you get the last step listed above (#3)? click on the domain mapping link in your drop down menu and fill out the form. once you do, it should start working immediately. drop us a line at help@onsugar.com if this isn't the case.

Thu, 04/02/2009 - 2:07pm

24

i just looked at your settings - sorry for the confusion, in step #3 - change www.yourdomain.com to the actual URL you are trying to map. for example: www.fotomaven.com or whatever the url you have set up is.

Thu, 04/02/2009 - 2:09pm

25

It's telling me an IP address is required.

Wed, 04/08/2009 - 6:16am

26

Sorry I clicked on A not CNAME, whoops, phewwwwwwww.

Wed, 04/08/2009 - 6:18am

27

How long does it stay parked? :-\

Wed, 04/08/2009 - 6:44am

28

Hey there - Noticed you seem to have everything all sorted out correctly - the .onsugar.com part of your url should go away in 24 hours.

Wed, 04/08/2009 - 8:44am

29

Hello, just wondering if that black menu bar at the top can be turned off at all after domain mapping? Thanks in advance for your help!

Thu, 04/23/2009 - 3:04pm

30

So we've added the CNAME record to point blog.mac-fusion.com to macfusion.onsugar.com (we host our own DNS). The name seems to resolve correctly:
host blog.mac-fusion.com
blog.mac-fusion.com is an alias for macfusion.onsugar.com.
macfusion.onsugar.com is an alias for onsugar.com.
onsugar.com has address 216.52.221.222
But when I try and navigate to the site in a browser it says it can't find the server blog.mac-fusion.com. Is there another step I might be missing?

Fri, 04/24/2009 - 12:46pm

31

lisac - re: the navigation bar:: While it is not supported/against our policy, you can technically turn the navigation bar off with a bit of css hackery. However, you will no longer be able to access the site menu (create new posts/change themes/etc.) if you do so.

Tue, 04/28/2009 - 9:43am

32

macgirl - figured out the problem - you didn't have the url set via the manage domain tool (step 3 in domain mapping) i filled it out for you, and i think everything is set now. let me know if you're still having problems. cheers!

Tue, 04/28/2009 - 9:50am

33

ah that rocks! http://blog.mac-fusion.com is in full effect! Thanks so much for all your help, sorry I missed a step :-/

Wed, 04/29/2009 - 2:26pm

34

Thanks for the info! I was just curious to see whether I can just turn it off for others and keep it for me, but now it just seems silly to do sans the navi bar... will definitely just keep it. Thanks anyway!

Thu, 04/30/2009 - 5:47pm

35

Love this feature. And it is free.
I need to pay US$10 on wordpress to have domain mapping, but here, it is free and I love it. Smiling

Wed, 05/20/2009 - 7:25am

36

OK it's stupid question time! So in order to do this do we have to buy the domain from say, godaddy?
Pardon my technological ignorant ways.

Wed, 06/03/2009 - 7:47pm

37

yep, you got it correct, before you can map your domain you will need to purchase it from a third party like godaddy.com, register.com, etc. Each registrar is different, so find one who meets your needs and price range. We happen to have GoDaddy specific instructions up there because we found that most of the questions came from folks who were using them, and it became necessary to have a quick place to point people to.

hope that helps, drop us a line if you have any other questions!

Wed, 06/03/2009 - 9:35pm

38

I can't seem to get my head round steps 1 and 2... can someone tell me what to do in english rather than computer speak? I'm with Easily.co.uk btw.

Mon, 06/15/2009 - 9:32am

39

it's actually a really easy, but really confusing process and each registrar is set up differently. it's hard to avoid the computer speak, but i'll try my best.

step one is dealing with your forwarding. when you register a domain you're registering yourdomain.com - what you need to do is make it so the yourdomain.com (where someone doesn't type in the www) forwards to www.domainyour.com - this is what step one is doing.

step two is changing your DNS settings (this is where you can set things like CNAME). what happens is you need to change the www CNAME to point to yourdomain.onsugar.com -- this is setting it so that if someone types in www.yourdomain.com - it gets the content that is at yourdomain.onsugar.com

step three is confirming it on our end that this is indeed what you intended to do.

unfortunately i'm not familiar with easily.co.uk's interface. however you should be able to contact their help desk and give them our steps.

if you're still having problems or need further clarification, drop us an email at help@onsugar.com

best of luck!

Mon, 06/15/2009 - 11:22am

40

Is there a way to map my domain so that www. infront of it and without it will work?

Mon, 06/29/2009 - 4:29pm

41

yep, you need to make sure that you set your non-www domain name to forward to the www version of the domain name. this is something you can do with your registrar, and is step one of our domain mapping. (see above). hope that helps!

Mon, 06/29/2009 - 4:42pm

42

I followed all the steps so that non-www domains will work, and my url ~ epicponyz.com , still doesn't seem to work. www.epicponyz.com works perfectly though. I'm sure it's an easy error I'm overlooking, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tue, 06/30/2009 - 9:27am

43

i think it may have just needed some time, everything looks like it's working now. can you confirm?

Tue, 06/30/2009 - 11:37am

44

The domain without www still doesn't work, but I'll give it another day. I just think GoDaddy takes a little longer to get that up and going.

Tue, 06/30/2009 - 3:02pm

45

i think i might need some help. i'm registered at godaddy and i got through the first steps just fine. but the option to change my CNAME doesn't appear under “Total DNS Control and MX Records” doesn't appear. any suggestions on what's going on?

Thu, 07/30/2009 - 3:02pm

46

band - did you set your nameservers? if so, then this might take a few minutes to appear. drop a line to help@onsugar.com with more details and we'll get you sorted out.

Thu, 07/30/2009 - 5:17pm

47

Are getty images the only feature will be prohibited if domain forwarding is selected? Will I still be able to customize themes and/or create my own? Will I still be able to use the quiz features, polls, etc? Thanks!

Tue, 09/08/2009 - 1:52pm

48

yep, the way it works now is that Getty images are the only thing you will no longer have access to. everything else is still free and available!

Tue, 09/08/2009 - 2:02pm

49

I successfully completed domain mapping and have decided that I no longer want it. I have gone to my vendor (Go Daddy) and tried to reverse the domain forwarding, but here on onsugar it still points to my domain. How do I keep my original onsugar domain and the domain name that I purchased separate? Please help me reverse this. Sad

Thu, 09/24/2009 - 7:55pm

50

I started a blog petrogold.onsugar.com by getting insights I read in an article in NYT.
I got multiple blogs in WP, Blogger etc. but never made money like Jason Callacanis etc.
How to make money like Sugar Inc.?

Thu, 10/15/2009 - 9:47pm

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