Google App engine application with godaddy domain issue

6
votes

I have seen other questions on this forum and several links but looks like most of them are outdated and hence could not help me with the issue.

I bought a domain - cinemahunter.com

I setup forwarding on godaddy to redirect from http://cinemahunter.com to http://www.cinemahunter.com

In Google App Engine, I clicked on settings, and then Add Domain. It asked me for Google Apps, though I didn't understand the reasoning, I did that, gave my domain name, it asked me to login to godaddy.com, I logged in successfully with the credentials and it was good. At this point, there are 2 steps outlined.

  1. Change how your naked domain (cinemahunter.com) is redirected. I have www in the textbox between http:// and .cinemahunter.com. It also said - You must change the A-record at your domain host for this change to take effect. I am assuming this is the forwarding that I setup in Godaddy. I clicked on continue
  2. Now it said to create a A record in DNS management page. I went to Godaddy and under A (host) I deleted the entry with IP - 50.63.202.22 and created 4 records with the following as specified in Google apps for Host @ points to 216.239.32.21, 216.239.34.21, 216.239.36.21, 216.239.38.21

I saved the changes twice in Godaddy. Also, I verified that under CName(Alias) www points to @.

At this point, I clicked on I completed the steps on Google Apps website. But when I try to access my website by typing www.cinemahunter.com or http://cinemahunter.com, I get the following error.

Google

  1. That’s an error.

The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

I have been reading different things and breaking my head for the past 5 hours. What am I doing wrong? Can someone please please help me if you went through this exercise recently. I did similar for another website of mine a couple of years ago and it was very simple, at that time, all I had to do was point www to ghs.google.com or something.

Thanks a lot in advance for your help

1
google-app-engine
Did you set the AppEngine app to actually use the domain? - Amber
@Amber how do I do that. In the first step, in APp engine dashboard, I clicked on Add Domain and then it took me to Google Apps process and I completed there. Is there anything else to do to make AppEngine use the domain - Karthik
Also, I do NOT need Google Apps at all in the first place. I don't need their email, calendar etc. I just need to map the domain I bought at godaddy to my appspot.com url. But the Google APps says 30 day free trial period, do I need to buy after that even if I don't need their services, just to map my domain. How can I work around this? - Karthik
You need to complete the Google Apps process, then go back to the App Engine dashboard and click Add Domain again. As for cost, stackoverflow.com/questions/18560247/… - Amber

1 Answers

6
votes

I finally figured it out. Thanks @Amber for the link, I had seen it earlier before your answer. So, for anyone ending up on Stackoverflow with similar issue, here are the details of resolution.

Google Apps is no longer free. You have to pay about $60 a year for the service. For Google App engine users, google started giving $50 upto maximum of 3 because of this issue. They stopped it after having a fix for directly mapping Google app engine to domain. Now you no longer need Google Apps and what you need to do is to go to https://console.developers.google.com and select your application. On the left hand side, click under App Engine --> settings. This will give you three steps

  1. If you haven't already, verify that you own the domain. It will then be added to the list in step 2. --> Give your domain name here and verify. Now it will take you to godaddy login page and you sign in with your credentials.

  2. Select the domain you want to point to. This will show nodomain even after domain is verified in step 1 below. This confused me. But I logged out and logged in and I saw the domain cinemahunter.com in the dropdown. There are two options here either the main domain or the sub-domain with www. I chose the sub-domain since I had forwarding setup in godaddy.

  3. Go to godaddy and under CName, under www change points to ghs.googlehosted.com.

Thats it!! It worked like a charm within a minute. Google makes it so difficult with all these changes. All the search results for mapping GAE to godaddy were old instructions which led to nowhere and the info on these changes were to be found only after digging deeply. Hopefully this will help someone without wasting some 8 hours like for me. Good luck !!