Google Apps and Domains
Okay, so I am over my initial infatuation with google apps. I must say that it is a potentially very powerful set of services even considering using the “standard” or free version.
But…there always has be one of these, eh?
For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to get it to work with my domains. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure this out. I know you can do it, I just can’t find the documentation to do it. What I am trying to do is this:
| I Want | NOT | |
| calendar.neohawk.info | www.google.com/calendar/hosted/neohawk.info/render |
If you are using google apps with your own domain, wouldn’t that make sense? Can’t figure out how to do it. I did find this page which helped to get me part of the way. I was able to get www.neohawk.net to correctly display my “google pages” site. However, if I am logged into that domain and try to hit calendar.neohawk.net, I can access the calendar but with the google.com domain.
This is not so much a problem for me personally, but it doesn’t make much sense. I have seen other people that seem to have got it down, but I for the life of me can’t figure it out. Nor have I seen a document in Google’s help center that explains how to do this across all google apps applications.
Can anybody enlighten me?
Comments
I’d say you need to create a “frame redirect” from you domain to the google domain, with the source http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/neohawk.info/. Some providers have an option in their DNS admin panels to do this, or you can create it yourself on your webserver.
Hey Jannis,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Okay, let’s take a step back, so you know what I have done so far and what I’m trying to accomplish. And all of this is really just an excercise for me to get my head around it.
First off, I’m using godaddy for DNS. Second, I am trying to this without using my server at all. Only godaddy and google.
Following the instructions on this page, I enabled forwarding for the neohawk.net domain, forwarding to www.neohawk.net. I also enabled masking. I then created an A record with hostname @ pointing to 64.202.189.170. Then the www CNAME pointing to @. This all works fine. So we’re good to go there.
Also per the instructions on using custom urls for google apps, I set up the following CNAME records:
I then selected custom urls for each of those, using the right names(docs, calendar, etc).
I can point my browsers at those urls (calendar.neohawk.net, for example) and access my calendar just fine. However, the url in the location bar is google.com/a/neohawk.net/render or some such. Same with docs or sites and mail. I can access them, but I get that google url. I was assuming that the masking would take care of this.
I have a feeling I’m missing something really obvious.
Hrm, ever consider hosting the domain on your servers and just using a rewrite rule?
Hey Benjamin,
To be honest, no I did not consider it. Well, that’s not really true, but the point of this exercise for me is to try and figure out how to do it with only google and dns (godaddy). I know I could do it a few different ways, particularly if I use my own servers. But that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid in this particular case. ;-)
If only to understand how to do it, and google indicates it can be done.
In the end, though, for this summer my son(15) is going to get control of the neohawk.net domain. I have given him a choice of 4 or 5 projects to do before school starts in the fall. He can do all of them if he chooses, but at least one. He will have complete control of the domain, so it may end back up on my servers anyway.
Who knows what a 15 year old will do….
Oh Benjamin,
You may be interested to know, the first commenter Jannis built a nice little app called pownce-jabber-bot which is a django application that allows you to post to pownce via jabber.
Just in case you want to check it out.
I’ve honestly not setup my GAE account yet so I don’t know how it would be done via google, sorry I can’t be of more assistance there..
Neat little app! I recently wrote a jabber bot with jabberpy to update our jabber room with some of our site traffic data. Jabber is quite flexible, you know? XMPP itself can be used as a transport for all kinds of stuff, not just chat.
oh that’s cool. I’d love to see that traffic data! ;-)
I jumped over to a couple of AG sites yesterday or the day before…got hooked on one of the kids games(sushi pack! ). You guys have an awful lot going on!
I figured it out. I’ll write up a separate post on what I did but I have it working I think.
Oh, I haven’t tracked the comments here, I’m sorry. I’m curious what the solution is.
Jannis, I’ll be writing up a post on it. It’s one of those “slap the forehead” while shouting “Doh!”. Just like I expected……..
And by the way, your comment provided part of the hint that opened my eyes.