How to Set Up Your GoDaddy Domain with Blogger

There are many advantages to using blogger as your website. Some of those advantages include an easy to use interface, pages for expanding your blog into a website, and most importantly, it’s FREE!

I recently helped a family member point her GoDaddy domain name to her blog. The instructions that GoDaddy or Blogger provided was not straightforward, so I want to ahead and post some helpful instructions that I found from eHow and TSKSOFT.

Things you’ll need:

* GoDaddy Domain Name
* Blogger Account

How to set up your GoDaddy settings:

1. Log into GoDaddy and go to Domains > My Domains.
2. Click on the domain that you want to use for your blog.
3. Find the “Total DNS Control and MX Records” link and click it.
4. Under the “Total DNS Control Panel,” locate “CNAMES(Aliases).”
5. Click on the pencil icon to edit it.
6. Set it as these settings exactly: “Enter an Alias Name: www” & “Points to Host Name: ghs.google.com” If you don’t know what TTL is, just leave it at 1 hour.
7. Hit OK.
8. Now we need to go back to the previous screen, the one where you found “Total DNS Control and MX Records,” but this time find “Forwarding:” and click on the link below it.
9. You will get a “Forward and Mask Domains” section pop-up at the top. Enter your URL with appended “www” as http://www.yourdomain.com, then tick “Update my DNS settings to support this change. (Recommended)”
10. Clicking the “Advanced Option” will show you that your URL is permanently forwarded (permanent redirect 301) to your specified http://www.yourdomain.com. You can click “Forward with Masking”
13. Finally, hit OK.

How to set up your Blogger settings:

1. Log into Blogger, go to “Dashboard,” pick a blog, and click “Settings.”
2. Under the “Settings” tab, click the “Publishing” tab.
3. Find this: “Switch to: • Custom Domain (Point your own registered domain name to your blog),” and click on “Custom Domain.”
4. Under the orange text that says “Buy a domain for your blog,” look for “Already own a domain? Switch to advanced settings.” It’s on the right side. Click “advanced settings.”
5. For your domain, enter your godaddy domain in the input box. It should include both the www. and the .com. An example would look like this: “www.domain.com”
6. Enter the word verification code, hit “Save Settings,” and you’re finished!

You’ll need to wait a few minutes before you can test out the forwarding and up to 24 hours before the domain name resolves to your blog.

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Photography: Parker Family | Morrisville, North Carolina

Last weekend, Jen’s cousin and his family came to visit us.  It was a great time spending the weekend with Michael, Larina and 3 year old, Caroline. I thought this was another great opportunity to brush the dust off the Canon SLR so we took some photos in the neighborhood park.   Here are some of the shots and thanks to my wife for the extra help on the photo editing.

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Photography During The Holidays

The time during the holidays is a great way practice photography. This past holiday, we had family across the eastern US come to visit and we enjoyed every moment of it.   Below are some of my favorite shots.

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New Design for Rubberbanditz.com!

Ari Zandman-Zeman owns a small, health-conscious business based in Durham, NC called Rubberbanditz.  I worked closely with Ari and designer, Shelley Cline, to create a fresh new look for the website to capture what Rubberbanditz is about.   After the design was finalized, it was sent to development and it is now live!

Go to http://rubberbanditz.com and check it out.


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Can’t Find Your Colors?

Do you ever get stuck on putting together a color scheme for a design?   There’s a lot of theory behind colors and what they mean.  Choosing a good combination of colors for a design can be challenging.   Below are some resources that may help with your creativity.    Feel free to share any of your own!

Color Scheme Designer 3

ColorJack

Color Combos

Six Revisions – A look into Color Theory in Web Design

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Certified… CCENT!

I’ve taken a good number of training classes on design and programming.  Most of the classes were for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, PHP, and CSS.   I also didn’t shy away from development courses on management, leadership, project management, communications and customer service.   However, I have recently taken an interest to expand my knowledge towards IT Networking.   It took a total of 3 months to receive my first Cisco certification.   I buried myself in self-studying a Cisco Press book – ICND1 (Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1).  I also attended a week long class at the Global Knowledge training center.   The ICND1 course covers basic concepts of networking including routing, switching and IP addressing for a small network.  It also covers data network operations and network security.  The book and the materials from the class were all very helpful, but I must say that the most valuable help I received was from my extremely knowledgeable and helpful co-workers, all who are very experienced network engineers.

It took me the full 90 minutes allotted to complete the 50 question test.  Of course, the exam threw some questions that were more difficult than others.   I had to make a concerted effort to manage my time to complete all questions.  I enjoyed the lab simulations more than the multiple choice type questions.  I found myself more interested in diving into command prompt of a router or switch to troubleshoot a network scenario rather than choosing which answer best fits the multiple choice question.   Nevertheless, I survived the brutal 90 minutes and passed the test.  The certification arrived in the mail this afternoon and it marks the first milestone of my technical education in the IT Networking field.  Thanks to everyone, my co-workers, and my wife for helping me start this journey.

What’s next?  I am on the next Cisco Press book – ICND2 and I will be working towards the exam for a CCNA certification – Cisco Certified Network Associate.

CCENT – Cisco Certifed Entry Network Technician!

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Photoshop CS5: Be Aware of Content-Aware

On September 27, 2010, I attended Kelby Training’s Photoshop Creativity Tour in Charlotte, NC.   The 6-hour day covered various Photoshop topics such as Layers, Channels, Retouching, Compositing, Type, Special Effects, and 3D.  The seminar was led by Bert Monroy, who is known for publishing several books including the first on the use of Photoshop (The Official Adobe Photoshop Handbook, coauthored with David Biedny). He also hosted his own TV show called PixelPerfect.  This guy knew his stuff and apparently he knew about Photoshop before Adobe did!   He does amazing work and is already testing out CS6.   I was impressed by this Photoshop master, to say the least.

Bert Monroy provided a lecture and trained us on some new features that CS5 has to offer. One of the useful tools he covered is the brand new Content-Aware Fill.  The best part is that this tool is extremely easy to use.

Take a look the photo below.  This is one of the engagement photos I took for my friends, Kevin and Leigh (see my last post).   In this photo, you’ll notice the orange construction tape hanging in between two trees in the back right – something that could be easily removed in Photoshop.

By traditional Photoshop approach, there are a combination of different tools to fix this – clone stamp tool, magic eraser, healing brush, and/or the smudge tool.

However, Adobe Photoshop CS5′s Content-Aware Fill makes this process much easier!

  • Use the Regular Marquee Tool (or any selection tool) to select your area to fill.
  • Go to Edit > Fill.

  • Choose Content-Aware under Contents and press OK.

  • Press CTRL+D or CMD+D to deselect and you’re done!

It’s that easy!   However, note that it’s not always perfect.  You may get some imperfections depending on the photo and what’s around the area to fill.  However, this quick-and-easy fill can eliminate many unecessary steps that you have been performing in earlier versions of Photoshop!

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