Monday 12 December 2016

Blogger Custom Domains vs HTTPS - a Techical AAR (After Action Rant)

So now I'm seriously considering exporting this blog and hosting it myself because Google don't seem to have their pants on straight.

I just made an edit to the layout, afterwhich it prompted me to visit the site to check out the changes. Only it sent me to the HTTPS secure version of the page, which didn't work. I kept on getting errors like my site didn't exist. Had a mild fluster of panic wondering if my domain name had expired in the last few minutes, and then went to pantsofwar.blogspot.com to check if it was still available from there.

It was, and even redirected to pantsofwar.com and that worked. I went to the other tab and reloaded.. nothing. And that's when I noticed the https vs http. Checked the settings, and lo and behold, secure pages aren't available to custom blog domains.

Awesome.

So my choices are now:

  • put up with a malfunctioning Blogger hosted page
  • dump my custom domain in favour of the generic Blogger https
  • dump Blogger and pay to host it myself
The downside of dumping Blogger is that I will lose the excellent wargaming community here. Wargamers who use Blogger won't be able to see my posts on my own blog without visiting my site separately. 

I do manage my own server farms and host other sites, but specifically chose Blogger to host my wargaming blog for the community. So I guess the real choice is between "put up with it" and "drop the custom domain." 

Ah well, at least I'm getting my money's worth out of Google. I certainly can't complain that they're ripping us off.


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