Updated: ** Look Below for Answers
One of the fun parts of being a blog consultant is playing with domain registrars to make your site show up. I've set up a lot of blogs, both for clients and friends, and every time is different, based on the blogging platform and the domain registar.
Most of the time you can make it work. Sometimes you can't. So, as of right now, http://stlrecruiting.com doesn't work. http://www.stlrecruiting.com works, but without the www, you're in trouble.
Normally, you can set the domain to forward, or create an html redirect page, but I'm using Pairnic.com as my host (on suggestion of Typepad), and if I use Custom DNS, which is required to set up subdomains, I'm, well, out of luck.
Pairnic is great for simple domains. You simply park (it means different things to different registars), your domain at the site, and both http://www.example.com and http://example.com work. It is really easy, and I would suggest it.
If you have subdomains, though - you're in trouble. http://blog.example.com can be created, but you have to disable Parking, which means you can't get http://example.com. And because you're not hosting the page (Typepad is), you can't set a redirect.
The most frustrating part is I switched to Pairnic because originally I couldn't figure out how to use successfulhosting.com and discountdomainregistry to work with Typepad accounts. Having solved that problem, now it is Pairnic that causes the problem.
And can we please put a stop to customer service reps giving you bad information? It was suggested I change the service back to Domain Parking, but that would have wiped out the subdomains I created for the free job postings. Here's a bit of advice - never listen to someone on the phone who reads from a script.
So I'm working on the problem, but if you are mapping a blog to a domain - make sure you choose the right registrar for your skill level. And if you aren't willing to host the blog yourself, you're stuck using Blogger to map the blog to a path (http://example.com/blog). At least, the Old Blogger let you do it through FTP. I don't know if that's still the case.
And yes, I can help you with your domain mapping problem. But I do have to charge you, and you have to trust me enough to give me the keys to the castle (the passwords and userlogin). But I'm trustworthy - and it will save you the frustration of waiting for the DNS servers to catch up to your changes.
Updated: Pairnic came through!
The solution was changing the A Name record. Sadly - I knew this and, forgot, but that's one of the problems with domain mapping - I should write it down next time.
So Pairnic, which already got my endorsement for the easiest to use with Typepad for simple mapping, now gets a second endorsement for their customer service, despite what I said earlier. Yay Pairnic.
