Gandi

A blog (combination of “web” and “log”) is a personal space online where you are free to express yourself. Each “article” published will be presented in chronological order and others will be able to comment on them. There are many different types of blogs today, notably:

• Personal diaries
• Travel logs
• Political commentary
• Corporate blogs
• …

To change your GandiBlog so that it is in English, after you log into your blog administration page at http://blog.gandi.net with the owner handle of your domain name, click on “Paramètres du blog” (if your interface is in French), and then you will see “Langue par défaut :” on the next page.

Select “English” from the dropdown menu, and after that your blog will be in English.

If you also want your blog administration section to be in English, then in the “tableau de bord”, click on “Préférences utilisateur”. On the next page, simply choose “English” as “Langue de l'utilisateur ”.

Limitations mainly exist in order to prevent any misuse and allow for a larger number of people to use our blog platform in a satisfactory way. Therefore, for the moment:

• We only allow one blog per domain
• Disk space is limited to 1GB per disk
• The monthly transfer of data is limited to 10GB

It is possible to make your Gandiblog reachable directly on your domain name, instead of a subdomain. There are many solutions to do so :

This works only if you use Gandi's DNS. Click on the “Modify blog address” item of your blog control panel. Then, suppress everything that is in the subdomain field. Make sure the field is empty and click on “Modify blog address”. Your blog will then be reachable at domain.tld instead of blog.domain.tld.

If you prefer that your blog url starts with www, type “www” in the subdomain field and click on “Modify blog address”.

This will not work if you don't use Gandi DNS. Log into your Control Panel, then click on your domain, and choose “Manage DNS zone file”. Replace your A record by the following :

a. If your blog url starts with www. :

www 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

b. If your blog url doesn't start with www. :

@ 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

The keys are the @ and www. fields. The @ line with the IP adress will redirect the ones that type your domain name directly on your blog. The www will do the same, but only if you want the domain adress to start with www.

If you don't use Gandi's DNS but you want your domain name to be your blog adress, you have to find out how to modify your DNS zone file in your web host control panel. You have to modify it this way (don't modify the fields that don't include an A or the ones that are referring to a subdomain) :

a. If your blog adress starts with www. :

www 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

b. If your blog adress doesn't start with www. :

@  10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

It is possible to manage several blogs on a domain, if you are using web host services.

You simply have to create an additional parameter in the DNS zone file that is linked to your blog.

Here is an exemple of an entry that is linked to a blog called “blog” and that is hosted by Gandi :

blog 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

A DNS zone file managing two blogs (one by Gandi, the other by your web host service) would have several entries :

gandiblog 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.
autreblog 28800 IN A 80.72.14.102

(The names should be your blogs', so should be the A or CNAME parameters …)

If you are not using Gandi's DNS, you need to do two things in order for your GandiBlog to work: 1. You must choose the name of your blog This is done on Gandi's website ( Administration → Control Panel → Update (in the Technical Section, under Blog).

Once you are in the Blog's section, click on “Update the blog's address” to define/update the address of the blog. By default the blog is a subdomain of your domain, with the name “blog”. You can change this by clicking on “Subdomain” and:

• Leave the box blank (this will make your domain the blog's address, without the www.)
• Enter www in the box (this will make your domain the blog's address, with the www.)
• Choose a name for your blog (this will make your blog's address like: chosenname.domain.tld)

Please do not forget that it can take up to 6 hours for this change to be taken into account. 2. You must make an entry in your host's DNS for your Blog

• If your blog is a subdomain (ex. blog.domain.tld):

You must find how you can make an entry in your DNS zone at your host. This is often possible directly on their website, but you might need to contact their customer support to learn where and how you can do that.

Once you have found where to edit your zone file, you need to add an entry that corresponds to the name of your blog (exactly as you chose it in step 1 above).

If, for example, you chose the name, 'ramblings' for your blog, you would need to add the following line in your DNS zone file:

    ramblings 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

where 'ramblings' is the name of your blog (you would, of course, replace 'ramblings' with the name of your blog).

• If your blog's address is just the domain (ex. domain.tld):

After finding where and how to edit your host's DNS, you must create the following entry:

    A. If your blog name begins with www

    www 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

    B. If your blog name does not begin with www

    @ 10800 IN CNAME blogs.vip.gandi.net.

Please keep in mind that if you update your domain name in the above way, that your blog will then replace any website that may be on the server (though the contents of your website will not be affected). This is because when users enter your domain name, they will be sent to Gandi's server (where your blog is hosted) rather than your host's server (where your website is hosted).

All changes to DNS will take time to be seen. In fact, it may take up to 6 or more hours before changes take affect. Please wait at least one day before contacting Customer Care for assistance following a DNS change, to ensure the your DNS have had enough time to be updated.

To use Google Analytics with your GandiBlog, begin by logging with your Gandi ID.

Then, in the side menu on your left, go to “Presentation widgets”; you will now see all the widgets that you can add to your blog.

Drag and drop the “Text” widget bar and place it in the sidebar of your choice (note: you cannot drag & drop in Safari).

Finally, open the Text widget by clicking on the blue ”+” button to the left of the word “Text”. The widget will then open up, allowing you to add your text.

Now, paste the javascript that Google gave to you in the bottom text box. You may type regular text in this box if you want too as well, however not to worry: the javascript will not appear in your blog.

That's all! Your statistics will be sent to Google and visible beginning one day after you have added this code to your blog.

If you are not using Gandi's DNS, you need to change the zone file of your domain at your web host to reflect the new name of your blog. If this is not done, you will not be able to access your domain, and you will see “Creation in Progress” in your domain's control panel.

Depending on how your web host manages changes to the zone file of your DNS, the exact procedure may vary. In essence however, you must do the following*:

• Delete the old subdomain (the old GandiBlog address, ex. blog.gandi.net)
• Create a new entry for the new subdomain (the new GandiBlog address, ex. betterblog.gandi.net)

Now when you type in the new address of your blog in your browser's address bar, you will get the following message: “Blog is not defined”.

This error message simply means that your DNS zone file is not correctly set up for the blog. Of course it is…*now*, but since DNS propagation can take time (hours, or even days), the system still thinks you are using the old configuration. You will therefore need to wait (overnight is a good time to wait), and check in the morning.

Then, when you type in the name of your blog, you will see it, at its new address!

• This is in the event that your blog uses the subdomain (blog.domain.tld) and not the domain (domain.tld). If your blog uses the domain as the address, and not the subdomain, changing the name requires purchasing a new domain name