Google App Engine and domain name

Question

Here is the situation:

I own a Google Apps for Business account.

I have two domain names registered :

• mycompany.com which is the principal do

Answer 1

It doesn't seem possible ATM to bind an App Engine application on a Google Apps Secondary Domain (sounds like a bug).

But it works fine on Google Apps Domain Alias.

• Go to https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourprimarydomain.com/DomainSettingsDomains
• Click Add a domain alias or a domain
• Select Add a domain alias of yourprimarydomain.com
• Follow instructions to verify your domain
• Go to your App Engine application dashboard
• Go to Application Settings
• Click Add Domain
• Type the domain name of your primary Google Apps domain (not the alias)
• Click Add new URL
• Select your domain alias from the dropdown list
• Click Add
• You will be asked to add a CNAME to ghs.google.com in your DNS configuration

That should work.

Answer 2

As of now, naked domains ( example.com ) are not supported by App Engine.

Instead you can make a Web Forward from example.com to www.example.com. This can be achieved in various ways depending on where you've registered your domain and if the registrar offers DNS services.

If not, you can use Zoneedit:

1. Sign up for a free account at zoneedit.com
2. Create a zone for your website
3. At your domain registrar, change the name servers to nsXX.zoneedit.com (multiple nameservers - these addresses can be found the page of your zone)
4. Create an alias for your www subdomain that maps to ghs.google.com
5. To make your site accessible from the naked domain, add a webforwad from domain.com to www.domain.com
   
6. Zbang! You've got a working website, that is accessible from both the naked and the www subdomain.

These changes might take some time to propagate

On the google apps page you had to add thee www web-address on the applications settings tab (what in my understanding you already did)

Hope this helps, and if not you, then maybe others :). + zoneedit is a great & free tool for DNS management, and you can also define custom mail forwards and stuff :)

(Ps. the screen shots are taken from a working app engine example site that runs from www.secondhand-extra.ro )

Answer 3

I think the real answer is to be found in Google's Limitations for multiple domains:

"Custom URLs for accessing Google Apps are available only for the primary domain. The Admin console enables the administrator to set a custom URL for various services. The custom URL applies only for users accessing the services at the primary domain. The same limitation applies to custom web address mapping for a Google Site."

It's quite a severe limitation, since it requires you to open a new Google Apps account for each custom domain you want to register, even if all domains belong to the same organisation.

Answer 4

At my goog app manage domain front page, I go to domain settings -> add domain alias for www.zzz-zzz-zzz.com. So I added www.zzz-zzz-zzz.org

At my domain registrar, I declare the following redirects:

zzz-zzz-zzz.com -> www.zzz-zzz-zzz.com zzz-zzz-zzz.org -> www.zzz-zzz-zzz.org

After that the following urls would all go to the same place:

• zzz-zzz-zzz.com
• www.zzz-zzz-zzz.com
• zzz-zzz-zzz.org
• www.zzz-zzz-zzz.org

Answer 5

google app engine does not allow mapping naked domain. you can use a redirect from myapp.com to www.myapp.com.

"Due to recent changes, App Engine no longer supports mapping your app to a naked domain. If your domain registrar supports URL redirects, you can redirect from http://yourdomain.com to e.g http://www.yourdomain.com or http://appid.yourdomain.com."

http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/general.html#naked_domain