So today http://blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ moved over to their shiny new server and along with that comes the ability to map your own domain name to your University blog.

This tutorial shows how to do it. Please note that whilst the theory is the same for all domains, in practise doing this for yourself will be slightly different. I personally buy my domains either from my hosting provider Dreamhost however there many others out there such as 1and1, GoDaddy, etc, etc and so I’m going to show you how this works for me.

The first step, alter the A record (or create a CNAME) for your domain’s DNS

Yes this sounds scary, technical and  beyond the realms of possibility however it’s dead easy. Basically the idea is that you set up hosting for the domain, and then you alter the domain’s A record, which is the special designation that is linked to the domain name which tells you which server the domain points to (in this instance you want it to point to the blog’s server). If on the other hand you’re wanting to have a subdomain (e.g. blog.alexbilbie.com) redirect to your blog, you need to create a CNAME on the root domain.

To do this with Dreamhost:

1. Log into your panel at https://panel.dreamhost.com/
2. Go to manage domains
3. If you haven’t already, add the domain (just set it up with basic hosting)
4. When the domain has been added, click DNS under the domain you want to edit
5. Where it says “Add a custom DNS record to [your domain name]”, leave the name field blank, in the type select “A” (which is the default), and in the value field type 195.195.10.15
6. Click  “Add Record Now”
7. Alternatively if you want to use a subdomain for your blog (e.g. blog.alexbilbie.com), in the “Add a custom DNS record…” section leave the name field blank, in the type field select “CNAME”, and in the value field type your blog url (e.g. alexbilbie.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk)

Next you want to alter your blogs links

1. Log into your blog at http://blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/wp-admin
2. When your inside the WordPress dashboard, open the Settings menu along the left handside and select “Domain Mapping”
3. Under “Add a new domain” type your domain name and then select “Primary domain for this blog”.

Until your domain’s DNS has propagated (which can take up to (but rarely ever does) 48 hours) you won’t be able to access your blog from your new domain yet, however once it does you’ll be able to access it at both http://[your blog name].lincoln.ac.uk/ and http://your-domain/.

Magic.