I have spent the best part of three days trying to set up the Google Apps For Your Domain.
It has been an infuriating journey to hell and back. I absolutely loved the idea of Google offering all they were for my Blog and then to host my web site, everything looked great, they talked a really good fight, in print. You couldn't actually get to talk to anybody or even write to anybody, its all automated with seemingly no follow up.
Having spent hours and hours overcoming the blogger probs with someone else publishing at this domain and then the web site not loading or linked with Google I finally at 0200 hours got the both working and went to bed. Next morning I received two emails via the link on my website so I know it was working first thing in the morning, as was the blog redirect. An hour later when I go to check neither is working, the pages just hang for both. There is no 404, no kiss my butt or anything useful at all. I started again all day fiddling, reading and re-reading the less than explicit help files, by 0100 the following morning, this morning that is, I had once again, I thought, reset everything (actually to where it was the night before but hey I'm thorough,) and was working on both again. Later this morning when I arose to admire my handywork guess what.... absolutely NOTTEN!! you are correct.
I've been trying all day and still no joy at 2130 i posted message on the support groups complaining and asking for others experiences, miraculously and for one attempt only the web site popped up. No sooner had I queried why this should happen so soon after a post than it was gone again.
Looking further through the topics it seems that Google just haven't got the setup, or the support staff to even try and deal with these errors which have no error codes to help isolate problems. Companies with nearly 400 email users are down, websites won't load, and the blogger community are struggling to point their blogs to domains they have purchased soley for that purpose because of what Google have offered. My advice to those considering progressing further with Google is wait! or else you'll end up taking a domain name and your blog somewhere else where you might have to pay to host it. If you knew that was the case would you have registered a domain in the first place or would you just have kept blogging happily?
See my post here and browse around the others while your there
I will update my blog when I have more news on the state of play but rather than waste time, playing with Google, until they tell me what's what, I will spend my time researching better ways of blogging with other sites and perhaps hosting my website elswhere. It truly is a shame, it could have been so good!
Tip of the day ....................................
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WAIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
