Using Google App Engine With My Dreamhost Registered Domain

Question

Hi There,

I have registered a domain example.com using dreamhost, and currently have a standard wordpress blog set up on www.example.com. I'd like to have appengine.example.com point to my Google Appengine application, but am having some difficulty doing so. At the moment, appengine.example.com just points to my normal directory on the Dreamhost server, and not my Appengine app. I've given as many details as possible below - I'd be hugely thankful for any advice.

I've follow some steps provided by Google, and a number of responses from the below post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/817809/how-to-use-google-app-engine-with-my-own-domain-not-subdomain but am still having trouble.

What I've done:

1. Created and registered a new domain: www.example.com, set up Google Apps + Gmail. Went to Google Apps Control Panel > Domains and added domain: example.com
2. Chose to 'Add new Domain' from Dreamhost panel, and added appengine.example.com . Whilst troubleshooting, I've moved between enabling 'Google Apps' for this domain and not' I've already set it up for main domain: example.com, so I didn't know if I'd need to do this for the subdomain.
3. Went to Google App Engine, selected my App > Application settings > Domain settings > Add domain > Added example.com
4. Was brought to Google Apps control panel, and can see my App, and have added URL: appengine.example.com. It's now apparently accessible from appengine.example.com and myapp.appspot.com

At this stage, appengine.example.com still just points to my standard Dreamhost directory.

A number of the guides discussed adjust CNAME records for your domain settings with Dreamhost; I'm not sure if this is necessary if you've already set up your domain for use with Google Apps, but I attempted to do this also.

Action taken: appengine.example.com > DNS > Add a custom DNS record:

• Name: appengine
• Type: A
• Value: ghs.google.com

Still it does not work!! Have I done something hugely incorrect? If anyone has any experience with this/guidance I'd really appreciate it!!!

Thank you, Ol

Answer 1

How long did you wait for your DNS changes to propagate? It can take up to 24 hours for changes made in your Dreamhost control panel to actually make it out to the DNS server that you are using.

Also, consider that an A record is different than a CNAME record, which is what you want.

Answer 2

You need to make two cname entries. One where the host is "ghs.google.com" and the other where the host is "google.com" and alias being the unique id google apps gives you.

Answer 3

Hi there,

Thanks very much for all of the help, this issue has now been resolved.

In my Dreamhost Domain settings, I had chosen to fully host the domain: appengine.example.com What I needed to do was work with the DNS settings for example.com and as you suggested, enter:

1. Name: appengine.example.com
2. Type: CNAME
3. Value: ghs.google.com

In addition to this, it took about 4 hours for it to actually be accessible from appengine.example.com .

For anyone else having trouble, I wrote up a quick guide to what I did here.

Thanks again!! Ol