You were right… they do the settings manualy behind the scenes

Your problem is that you have not got an A record or a CNAME record pointing at Wikidot (or at your web-hoster — I'm not sure what you want.) I suspect that you have used the "Domain Pointing Manager" and not a "Custom DNS Record". I am not sure where that is in their control panel, maybe "Domain Central"?

The Domain Pointing Manager uses other technology to point the domain at a web-hoster. In fact the domain points at the iPower web server which pulls redirection tricks to make it look like the domain points at a third-party hoster. These tricks are only needed for web hosters that do not let you use A records and CNAME records. My ISP is like that for the "home pages" it provides — No scripting, no DNS.

At the moment if you type "www.ethischforum.be" you end up at our wikidot site… however if you manually add for example "admin:manage" the homepage is reloaded.

Also the URL does not change if you go to different pages inside the website. Only www.ethischforum.be is in the adressbar of the browser.

The wikidot admin gives me the error message
The host asks me to provide 2 dnservers

Here is a picture of their interface.

-Ed

You can find the discount coupon codes for each month by googling.

 $ whois soronlin.org.uk Domain name: soronlin.org.uk Registrant: Richard Urwin Registrant type: UK Individual Registrant's address: The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service. Registrar: Webfusion Ltd t/a 123-Reg.co.uk [Tag = 123-REG] URL: http://www.123-reg.co.uk Relevant dates: Registered on: 16-Feb-2003 Renewal date: 16-Feb-2011 Last updated: 06-Mar-2009 Registration status: Registered until renewal date. Name servers: ns.hosteurope.com ns2.hosteurope.com WHOIS lookup made at 13:50:42 20-Oct-2010 -- This WHOIS information is provided for free by Nominet UK the central registry for .uk domain names. This information and the .uk WHOIS are: Copyright Nominet UK 1996 - 2010. You may not access the .uk WHOIS or use any data from it except as permitted by the terms of use available in full at http://www.nominet.org.uk/whois, which includes restrictions on: (A) use of the data for advertising, or its repackaging, recompilation, redistribution or reuse (B) obscuring, removing or hiding any or all of this notice and (C) exceeding query rate or volume limits. The data is provided on an 'as-is' basis and may lag behind the register. Access may be withdrawn or restricted at any time. 

If you need more security than that, then I think GoDaddy will front for the domain themselves and keep your identity completely hidden. (Except for a court order of course.) I haven't used them myself so I'm not sure how it works.

Personally I've had no problem with 123reg.co.uk.

What is the current recommended domain provider to buy from? I want:

• A .com domain (possibly a .net or .org address at the same domain as well)
• To hide my personal details when someone looks up the domain

I have both of these domains pointed at wikidot…what am I doing wrong?

Your .ca site has far more inlinks than your .com, about 3000 more. The result is that your SEO efforts on the .ca are much better than on the .com. Also, your .com redirects to your .ca so one look by a Google quality rater means a decrease in rank the .com.

My question for you: why are you trying to get indexed for both sites with there is no obvious keyword benefit from the .com compared to the .ca and the .com has no content?

If you ever run into that problem again, you can always just visit the site manager at http://rollinglife.wikidot.com/admin:manage <— that page will work even if your custom domain is broken. The Wikidot team has done this to solve problems like the one you were having.

Welcome to Wikidot :)

Cheers,
Shane

I setup custom domain rollinglife.com for my Wikidot site rollinglife.wikidot.com

I got settings successfully saved message. However, I accidentally clicked "Use the custom domain as the only domain for this site" and saved, before first confirming that my custom domain is working properlly.
Now my custom domain is not working and also everytime I try going to rollinglife.wikidot.com it is redirecting to my custom domain. My site is blocked and there is no way I can go to my site now.

Please help.

Regards,
Ketan Sevekari

I've never had any extra charges. Then again, I've got such little traffic hitting my site that it'll probably never be an issue. I just took a quick look and can't find any "fine print" about excess changes. Do you get the same pricing as I do in the US? I know there's a 1and1.uk - is there a 1and1.downunder? ;)

-Ed

Have you had any excess charges from them recently? Before entering my payment details, I read the agreement, and noticed that they can charge me up to $200 a month in excess charges, which has me a bit worried. I'm assuming that most people wouldn't even reach $10 in excess charges - but wanted to check with you on this first.

Cheers,
Shane

when I type "site:turnerstips.ca" into google I see all my site's pages displayed nicely indexed.
when I type "site:turnerstips.com" into google I only see one page…not cool.

I have both of these domains pointed at wikidot…what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

wikis.mysite.com/wikiname1/
wikis.mysite.com/wikiname2/

Kind of like the option in Wordpress Multi-user to use subfolders for blogs rather than subdomains.

If not, can I do this with a URL redirect?

Question: Why does the google cache of either of these sites appear to go through a infinite loop and the website preview space is blank? The top text shows the website is being cached at certain dates.

I'm aware changing to custom domains hurts organic traffic for a little while but I'm worried this website cache issue is also a big deal. Anyone have advice on how to fix this?

One thing though which might have a bearing on it. After registering the http://www.fossoway.org site through 1and1 I realised that 1&1 don't automatically submit the domain name to search engines. I submitted the site manually to Google and Bing on 3 December but also filled out the SEO Submission info at 1&1. They have not yet submitted it or others that were registered around the same time and I have a feeling they only do this once every 30 days. I am checking this with them as it seems a bit inflexible. I suspect that once they do so that the site will start to move up the rankings. This is what happened on another site I will be working on soon at http://www.acacia-development.co.uk which 1&1 have submitted and which does appear in the first page of a search using the term Acacia Development Associates.

So I will check when 1&1 will submit this site but any other suggestions would be welcome.

This is my first post on the Forum so hope I'm following protocol - I'm sure you'll all keep me right.

I put the basic Fossoway site content together and Rob did a great job of making it look professional with a CSS facelift and extra functionality such as the forum and gallery. I've done some research and thinking about the difficulties Rob mentions in his post and thought I'd share my thoughts here.

I wonder whether the custom domain settings have anything to do with the SEO difficulties the Fossoway site is experiencing. Some observations/questions:

1. Custom Domain Setup
On the custom domain page of the "admin:manage" section of the fossoway site, the box for, "use the custom domain as the only domain for this site", is checked. According to the last bullet point under the heading "What should you do before setting a custom domain?", all requests to fossoway.wikidot.com should be automatically redirected to the custom domain (because the box is checked). However, I am still able to view and edit the site via the fossoway.wikidot.com address.

a. Is this because there is no explicit redirect set up for the fossoway.wikidot.com domain?
b. Would it be advisable to add a 301 redirect from fossoway.wikidot.com to www.fossoway.org to "force" wikidot to use the custom domain?
c. I notice that Rob set up a redirect for "fossoway.org". I think this must have been included in the purchase of the www.fossoway.org domain (Rob sorted all this for me so I'm not sure and haven't checked with him yet).

2. SEO
I checked the redirect for fossoway.wikidot.com using a tool online ([http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php]) and got the message;
"Either http://fossoway.wikidot.com is NOT REDIRECTING to any URL or the redirect is NOT SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY". This is not what I expected because, although there is no 301 redirect explicitly set up from fossoway.wikidot.com on the admin:manage page, the "use custom domain as the only domain" box is checked.

I checked the "fossoway.org" redirect that is currently set up and got;
"Found redirect to http://www.fossoway.org/. The Redirect is Search Engine Friendly."

a. According to the online redirect checker tool, search engines might think that the fossoway.wikidot.com domain has no contents. Do you think that might be what is happening with Google/Bing and could explain the poor rankings?
b. I notice that when I do a specific search e.g. "fossoway residents" a result appears with a link to the fossoway.wikidot.com site (not the www.fossoway.org site). Is there a chance that Google/Bing treat the www.fossoway.org and fossoway.wikidot.com sites as duplicate content and penalises them in the rankings accordingly?
c. www.fossoway.org is still ranking on first page in Yahoo! and Lycos (#1!) so the difficulty seems to be Google/Bing-specific.

One final thing that I wondered - Until today I had copied the contents of "Summary" on my forum posts (which are automatically displayed on the start page using a wikidot module) into the main body of the forum post itself. Could this be viewed as duplicate content and incur a search penalty? I have tonight removed this duplication just in case but not sure it was having a significant effect.

Any pearls of wisdom gratefully received.
Thanks

I've got to tackle this domain monster soon, myself.

I just got the problem fixed and changed the custom domain.

My host had named the CNAME :: ntsi.wikidot.com and not wikidot.com

So that was causing the problem…

Thank you so much for all your help! :)

Take care!!! :)

I am still getting the same error message.

Its been 24hrs now since my host did the domain pointing.

But when I try to change the Custom Domain Setting in Wikidot, I am getting the same error message as before.

Don't panic, but
Sorry, it seams that the new domain does not resolve to a valid IP address. See the tips at the bottom of this page.

When I enter: www.n-tsi.com in the address bar, its getting redirected to www.ntsi.wikidot.com

But I have not changed any settings in the custom domain.

Am I doing something wrong?

What should I do now?

Thanks in advance…

Thanks you so much!! :)

For Custom Domain: www.n-tsi.com
For 301 redirects: n-tsi.com

I get this error message on almost every occasion I have set up a custom domain. But then I leave it overnight and come back to it and it works. I think the changes at your host take a while to flow through the internet. So leave it a few hours and then try.

I have another problem now.

I tried doing the custom domain setting in Wikidot: Manage Site.

I put:

For Custom Domain: n-tsi.com
For 301 redirects: www.n-tsi.com

But an error message came up::

Don't panic, but
Sorry, it seams that the new domain does not resolve to a valid IP address. See the tips at the bottom of this page.

I tried

For Custom Domain: www.n-tsi.com
For 301 redirects: n-tsi.com

But the same error message is popping up.

I dont what I am doing wrong..

Please help me…

I shall let my host know about this and try this out.

Thanks again!

cold_blood3d

Be aware that your site will likely take a massive plunge in google hits when you replace your wikidot domain with a custom domain. For me, this meant going from ~ 1400 google referrals per day to ~ 200 right after I made the switch.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but it's an interesting subject and I have noticed this (and had it reported to me) on several sites recently although I don't think it's a new phenomenon. One of the sites I developed, http://www.fossoway.org, was developed under the name http://fossowaydev.wikidot.com and it was picked up by google very quickly and the search term "fossoway" brought it up near the top of the rankings. Custom domain http://www.fossoway.org was then setup and the site disappeared from the rankings completely the next time google did a re-index. Well it's probably on some lowly page somewhere but I haven't found it without explicitly putting fossoway.org in the search term. I've checked the dns and custom domain settings both at 1&1 and wikidot and can't see anything obviously wrong.

I assume your ranking must be re-built from scratch. Is this true?

I think the answer is a resounding yes: you have to re-build the google ranking although I find it odd that google finds the wikidot domain very quickly but not others. In my case that has meant getting 1&1 to re-submit it (at their leisure it seems), and I have also manually re-submitted it using Web CEO. Temporarily I have used adwords so that it is at least at the top of the results when you search for "fossoway" but that is not a permanent solution.

Worryingly I have found exactly the same problem on Bing. I don't think it a problem with Wikidot but just the way search engines work. But it's a huge pain.

Of course yours won't be the same but there should be something similar.

I am new to Wikidot. I just created a website at wikidot.com.

I have a domain name from nbinternet.com and they also provide for our e-mail accounts.

Now if I set up my Custom Domain and point my XYZ.com to ABC.wikidot.com, will it affect my e-mails (receiving and outgoing)?

I spoke to the customer care people of nbinternet and they told me that sometimes when the domain is pointed, their customers have lost e-mails.

Is it true? If I custom domain will it affect my e-mails? Has it happened with wikidot.com before?

Please help me as I dont know what to do.

-Ed

Someone has been very interested in my domain as of late I guess and I got these google alerts for url appraisal and other things as well as a Whois search. But anyway I realized that there was all my personal information just splashed up on a page for anyone to find. I'm a private person and I don't want my home address and everything else accessible because someone searches my domain..but it's required to be accessible.

Anyway, to make a long story short I went ahead and purchased a private domain option through Godaddy. That uses a "domain by proxy" service. You still have complete control over your domain it's just that they come up as the information.

I don't know how this works for other domain services but for godaddy it was as simple as choosing to make the domain private and then paying for it. I already checked and it worked immediately. My info was there one minute and gone the next.

This may not be important to anyone but me but I thought I'd bring it up! Your email and everything is searchable this way.

We'll make the /noredirect/true option work to disable the "Use the custom domain as the only domain for this site" option on a page.

Does checking "Use the custom domain as the only domain for this site." cause problems in this situation or does yoursite.wikidot.com still work?

-Ed

Good question, and something I'd also like to have an answer to if possible.

If it does cause problems, then a simple workaround would be to prevent a page from using the "Use the custom domain as the only domain for this site" setting if it has the ManageSite module on it.

You rock.

only when i'm feeling insecure :-)
_(often)

-Ed

do you remember what it was called?
because that will get you there

The wiki is listed under my account, but there is no way to manage it.Is there a way to configure a different domain.

what are the advantages/disadvantages to having "Use the custom domain as the only domain for this site" checked?

What it says on the admin page: requests to the .wikidot.com site name will get redirected to the custom domain.

I guess I just had to wait…a lesson in patience!

@pierterh, what are the advantages/disadvantages to having "Use the custom domain as the only domain for this site" checked?

Thanks in advance.

You should find that anyone going to a wikidot page now gets redirected properly to turnersips.ca.

-Pieter
Wikidot Inc.

http://turnerstips.ca/answers

I never received any error messages but….I am still stuck with …..".wikidot.com" and the end of every page.

How long should I wait for the changes? (I know it depends on various factors but how long is TOO long?)

My site is www.turnerstips.ca

Thanks in advance!

Basically you can use DNS names for subdomains but not for domains. This is a DNS thing, not Wikidot. So let's say you register example.com. You can set-up a number of "DNS records", including an A (host 'address') record that provides an IP address for a name. You always have an A record for a host name and it must always specify an IP address, not a name.

Which gives us a DNS entry like this:

 @ 10800 IN A 67.228.37.26 

And many web clients will try to make this more friendly. The '@' stands for 'the hostname', thus example.com. The 10800 is the timeout (time-to-live) which specifies how long this DNS entry is cached by servers between you and example.com.

Next, we can define subdomains like 'www.example.com' and 'blog.example.com'. You can define these either using address records, or using canonical name (CNAME) records.

A CNAME record refers to another DNS name, which can be 'wikidot.com' or 'www.wikidot.com' (these are equivalent here). So:

 blog 10800 IN CNAME www.wikidot.com. www 10800 IN CNAME www.wikidot.com. 

This is, again, the raw DNS record format. Most web interfaces try to make it simpler for you.

So, what does this mean for your custom domain?

• If you want to use the hostname (example.com) you must define an A record that points to Wikidot's IP address
• If you want to use a subdomain (www.example.com) you can define a CNAME record that points to www.wikidot.com

One way for Wikidot to solve this problem is to simply ban the use of hostnames. Other services do this but I find it annoying because it means when people type the hostname without 'www' they land on whatever web site the actual A record points to.

Tell me if this helps. I'll write up the article now.