Recently, Google has released a NEW version of Google Sites (it can be accessed through https://sites.google.com/new), however, it has no option to use a custom domain with it. If you still would like to use this version of sites with your domain, you may set up the connection via URL forwarding.
Classic Google Sites (https://sites.google.com) provide you an ability to map your Namecheap domain pointed to our BasicDNS, BackupDNS (a legacy option), PremiumDNS or FreeDNS with your Google Site, so that your domain (e.g. “www.namecheap.com“) will be shown in the browser’s bar instead of a default Google Sites webpage – https://sites.google.com/site.
NOTE: If you are using hosting or other third-party nameservers, the following needs to be done on the side of your hosting/DNS provider.
Please follow these instructions to map your domain with Classic Google Sites:
Go to your Namecheap account > Domain List > Manage > Advanced DNS > Host Records > Add New Record to add the ghs.googlehosted.com Google verification record for the subdomain you wish to connect to the site:
Click on the Save All Changes button each time you need to save the record:
This record will only map your subdomain to the site (www.namecheap.com in our case). Should you want to access the site via bare domain as well (e.g. “namecheap.com”), please create a URL redirect record to forward @ (Host) to https://www.namecheap.com (Value) – namecheap.com is an example, please replace it with your actual domain name 😉
Wait for 30 minutes for the host records to be accepted. Please also check if there are any CNAME, URL Redirect (Unmasked/Masked/Permanent) or A or records set for the same Host. Such records can conflict with each other, thus, they are to be removed.
Here is an example of such conflicting records:
After that you should go to the Classic Google Sites Admin Console and click on the name of your site:
Select Manage Site from the More actions drop-down menu:
Scroll the page a bit and click on the “Map this site” button (or “Web Address” on the left if it’s there):
Insert a subdomain that you’ve already added at Namecheap (www in our case) into the Web Address line and click “Add mapping“:
Click on the “I’ve completed these steps” button:
If you receive any error after that (Error 405, for example), don’t worry, it may happen. The domain name will be still mapped successfully in a few minutes or so.
That’s it!
Leave a Reply