When Google Sites will not MASK
This problem foxed me for hours and over night, so I thought it was worth sharing.
I’d done one google site for someone and at the end, I mapped it to their custom domain and it worked perfectly. It had SSL and everything ;-)
Actually even that process was a bit of pig for other reasons, so I may come back to that.
But the point of today was I did a second site and when I came to publish to the custom URL, it HALF WORKED!
When you typed in the DUB DUB DUB (WWW) it would bring up the site, but the URL masking failed and you saw the google SUB DOMAIN URL exposed.
Navigation worked, but again exposed the google sub domain.
In other words the custom domain name only got them to the google site. It didn’t work as a custom domain.
I had no clues. The only difference was this domain name was bought from GoDaddy and I’ve always found their DNS notoriously slow (they do have a paid premium option of course) and things have taken ages to propagate compared to other domain registrars.
So everything I did was subject to delays, which caused further doubt, as to whether I had done something wrong, or not.
“google sites custom domain not masking”
I must have googled 30+ pages and got no answers and no clues. According to everyone, they showed the process I had followed and the said it should just work. No query like “google sites custom domain not masking” would not bring up any clues :-(
I had no choice but to let it stew overnight, hoping that it was a DNS issue after all. My only future ideas were to wreck it and start over and I wasn’t looking forward to that and another round of propagation delays and possibly identical, no custom URL, masking
I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain this to the client either. They weren’t super techie and they just wanted their site working PRONTO!
The stupidly simple solution to a google site not custom domain masking:
The topic is already confusing enough, with versions of the process for CLASSIC sites and NEW STYLE sites being different. New sites didn’t even support custom domain mapping at all, for a pretty long time! With the process for personal and gSuite owners being different. And with the myriad of domain registrars being slightly different, to make google’s way of doing things, even more esoteric and finicky.
For the custom domain mapping to half work and produce non masked custom domain URLs, added huge frustration to what should have been a five minute favour to a client.
The stupidly simple solution to a google site not custom domain masking:
So crunch time. Why was the custom domain mapping not masking and showing google sites sub domain as the URL, instead of the lovely new shiny custom domain ?
It turned out that the SHARING setting for PUBLIC VIEW, was NOT set to public! That was it! But as I was logged in, it showed me the google sub domain view, instead of a 404 or no access.
But I couldn’t find that information anywhere — so just for you, there it is, hiding in plain site :-)
SUPER TOP TIPS FOR WORKING WITH GOOGLE SITES:
Avoid this at your peril ;-)
Verify your domain with on google WEBMASTER as soon as you can. BEFORE you build your Google site. Why? Because Google’s verification process is slow and seems a little buggy to me. You have to add a TEXT record (or a cname record) to verify your domain, at your registrar. As such you have to wait for DNS propagation and for Google to pick it up too.
If that propagation is slow, such as I have found with GoDaddy DNS, you have an extra problem. It seems like every time you PUBLISH/VERIFY at Google Sites, you get a DIFFERENT verification code to use. That creates a groundhog loop of moving goal posts — AKA different codes to verify each time. So you pretty much have to leave it open and hope it propagates before you have to shut down the PC/page.
But by using Google Webmaster FIRST, it seems much quicker and much more stable with the verification code it wants you to use. Either way, Webmaster picked up the DNS in seconds, while Sites was on it’s 16th hour.
So if you VERIFY your domain via Google WEBMASTER first instead, when you publish your google site, it will already know you own it and just get on with it! Which let’s face it, is what we all want and what “tech” is supposed to do, right?
It saves SO much frustration in this step. Do yourself a favour and do it this way round!
And you can do this as soon as you register your domain, to avoid further delays. You don’t need hosting, you just need to be able to add a TEXT record at your registrar, where you bought the domain.
As easy as pie!
I hope this little tip saves you the bucket of frustration that I endured.
Google Sites is a little basic, but I’m still amazed that it exists and that it works and that it looks pretty good.
Once you get past the niggles (like the custom domain mapping & the way it defaults to full width elements) you get a drag and drop website, with SSL and your own domain, without having to pay for hosting.
You can do MOST things (not JavaScript code for security I presume) including using Google Docs, like FORMS, for audience interaction (i.e. feedback, polls, surveys).
Also the limitations in design is what makes Google Sites look so professional and uniform. You can not mess it up with your favourite “CRAYON EMULATION” font. In fact the furony is that despite google owning Google Fonts, your font choice on Google Sites, is VERY minimal.
It will be a good day and it will be a bad day, if they ever allow us to use our own choice of google fonts on google sites.
Handy URLs:
Google Sites itself:
Google Webmaster (do this first):
And the client just texted
Cheers mate
If only he really understood how many hours it took to de-niggle this 5 minute job…
See you then.
Peter