Layman guide for setting up Google Apps on wordpress.com blog with registered domain name

The best blogging platform on the planet wordpress.com and the best of services suit Google Apps, do you know WordPress.com bloggers can send and receive email from their mapped domains using Google Apps for Domains? A few simple steps and you can have your WordPress blog and your email addresses on your own domain means several gigabytes of space, the ability to set up multiple mailboxes and much much more.

Let’s see how it works.

Getting a wordpress.com blog

This is probably the simplest step. One can get his own wordpress.com blog for free within seconds without filling much of the details.

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Getting a domain name and mapping your wordpress.com over it

There are a number of ways to get a domain name and some of them might be better than others, but the one, I chosen was upgrading from wordpress.com itself. Though on a bit costlier side than others, but still the most convenient and easiest option.

You need to navigate to Dashboard->Upgrades and there you can find the option for adding a domain. There are two things here; Registration and Mapping.

If you already have a domain name registered from some other provider then you need to bother about the DNS access for your registered domain, which will be required, if you want to map your wordpress.com blog over the same domain name.

Note that this name will be the name, your site will be known by after it. The name has not to be necessarily the similar one as your wordpress.com blog was. Note that even after registering a name and mapping your blog on the same, your blog still will be under those wordpress.com restrictions, but profit is your site will be unaltered and hosted on one of the most reliable provider that is wordpress.com itself.

 

If the domain name, you given is available, then you will be prompted for your registration information. Complete the required fields, then if you want the private registration upgrade, check the box that says Make my personal information private for this registration. If you want to stick with the standard public domain registration, leave this box blank. Then click Register Domain.

Charges for purchasing and registering a domain name costs $5 as of now, rest $12 are for the mapping part.

Once you are done then you will have two domain options like the above snapshot. For mapping part, all you need to do is choosing the check box in front of your new domain name in place of the earlier wordpress.com, press the Update Primary Domain button and you are done. It might take around 24-48 hours to process the changes.

You can even map a sub domain here in the same way. Like say, I have a website already running in name of http://nitishkumar.net and I just want to add my blog into it, then I can go by adding something like blog.nitishkumar.net in same way as above.

For mapping an existing domain, you can find the official post here.

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Setting up Google Apps free edition for your WordPress.com blog now

First you have to go Google Apps site and sign up. While there are a number of other options, but for most of the us, the free one with 50 email addresses option suits most (obviously).

After clicking the Sign Up button,  it will ask for your domain name and you just have a registered one now, so time to use the same.

Once you press Get Started, then it will ask you the usual profile information etc. Please mention a working email address there and then you will be asked for creating an Administrator account that will manage your Google Apps account later on (You can delegate the rights to multiple people but that is after this part).

Once set up, you will receive an email from Google Apps with your login page that would be something like given below:

http://google.com/a/[your_domain_name_here]

Better go by the link provided in the mail. Login into the same with the administrator account, which you just created and it will prompt you with an option to activate Google Apps.

After pressing the same, you need to prove the fact that you own the domain name.

As you can see that there are a number of options available. The first one is a complicated one and suited for people who know things, second one needs access of files on your blog, which wont be your case as you are still in restricted environment of WordPress.com.

The easiest one is to choose the HTML file upload option and then copy the file name only that will be something like Googlexxxxxx (leave the .html part). Do not close this page.

Now, go back to your wordpress.com dashboard and then upgrades->Domains and then press Edit DNS

Here you will get the Google Apps option. All you need to do now is to paste the file name in the verification code text box and then press Generate DNS Records. That will generate the custom DNS records for your domain in the big box given above. Do not close this page.

Now go back to your Google Apps page, choose the first option to Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration, then in instructions drop down, choose others

It will provide you a string as shown above. Copy the same then paste at end position into the WordPress.com page that you left open with generated DNS Records. Just add a “TXT “ (with space) before the same. That will look like something given below

Now save DNS Records and you are done.

Go back to Google Apps page and press verify now. It will get verified and you are ready to Rock-n-Roll with your Google Apps account, like I am using one for my blog with an email id for me as nitish@nitishkumar.net 

Feel free to contact me if any queries.