Does anyone know of a way to switch domain names and still retain replies on your blog? I just want to make sure I’m not missing some secret way of making it work. Thanks!
I don’t think switching domain names should affect replies. Can you explain a little more about what you’re concerned about?
Sure, I’m thinking about switching from frostedechoes.com to frostedechoes.net. Whenever I’ve changed the domain previously, the existing replies no longer showed up on my blog. Only replies from after I switched the domain showed up. Hope that helps.
Thanks!
Yeah, even I have lost all the webmentions whenever I switched the domains – this was before I was hosting with Micro.blog. And given all comments (replies) are webmentions, I can see how that happens. Given that Micro.blog is also the receiving service for webmentions and one that knows of the domain change, it may also change the URL it queries for fetching webmentions whenever the domain changes.
@manton can confirm how big a change it is though. Or if it already does that 
That’s interesting, I see what you mean now… When showing replies on your blog, it uses the URL of the blog post to find replies to it. So, when changing domain names, if the old URLs aren’t updated, I can see how this would happen. However, I think I’ve fixed any bugs related to not updating URLs, so it should work.
If you try this and notice any problems, let me know and I’m sure it’s something I can update. The disconnect between web pages and their replies shouldn’t be permanent.
Thank you, sir! I went ahead and changed the domain, but the replies only showed up on the first post with responses.
Hi @manton, I recently added a domain name to my micro.blog. All went well, but since the change, all replies on my posts disappeared (they’re still readable on my micro.blog account). If I read your comment from above correctly, they should still show up?
And, while I’m at it, two related, slightly off topic questions:
- I’m thinking of changing my domain name once again (from microblog.arnoldhoogerwerf.nl to just arnoldhoogerwerf.nl. In hindsight I prefer a shorter site address.) Is there a limit to the frequency to change domain names on micro.blog? It found it a very quick and easy process the first time, so I expect not?
- Is there a way to update all internal links to my new domain as well? I know of Wordpress plug-ins that do this, perhaps there’s also an easy way to do this with micro.blog?
Thanks in advance
Regards
Arnold
The replies not appearing sounds like a bug. I’ll look into that and fix it. It should continue to work even when the domain name changes.
As you guessed, you can change your domain name as many times as you want. The only limitation is that sometimes it takes Micro.blog a little while to notice the DNS changes.
For updating all the links, when you change the domain name Micro.blog tries to update the URLs for your posts, but it doesn’t try to update links internal in a blog post unless it’s something like a photo reference. You can probably use the find-and-replace feature to update other changed URLs.
Check out this video for an overview: Find and replace - YouTube
If that isn’t flexible enough, let me know and I can look at making this kind of “URL updating” a built-in feature.
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Hi @manton , thank you for your clear answer, I’m going to check that link, I totally forgot about the find and replace function!
One last question about Mastodon compatible usernames and subdomains. Regardless of having a subdomain or not, is it possible to create a Mastodon compatible username with only the domain name? In my case that would be: @arnold@arnoldhoogerwerf.nl , while still retaining a subdomain for my microblog.
Currently using a root domain like arnoldhoogerwerf.nl requires hosting that domain on Micro.blog. In theory it is possible to forward a domain to a subdomain for Mastodon, but it requires a little server configuration wherever you are hosting that domain name. When I have time I’d like to write up instructions for it.
I think I don’t understand what you mean. I have my site hosted on Micro.blog, but want to point my own domain name to it. I already did that successfully with microblog.arnoldhoogerwerf.net but now want to strip the subdomain part, and just use arnoldhoogerwerf.nl. After that I want to set my mastodon-compatible username as well.
I actually just changed this and it seemed to work, except I now get a perpetual spinning circle after clicking “Update Blog Settings”… Maybe you can look into it?
Sorry I misunderstood your question. What you’re doing is exactly right. I’m not sure why the blog settings didn’t save… Can you try again and let me know if it goes through successfully? Thanks!
I did try it again right away, but the update is not working. I will send you an e-mail with more details
Quick update here for other people finding this discussion: we solved the problem, and if anyone else sees this, please email help. For blogs with lots of posts and uploads, sometimes updating the domain name can take too long. I’ll be improving this.
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I’m having the problem discussed at the end of this thread. I changed my micro blog from being at my root by removing the old A record pointing the root to the micro.blog IP and removing the old CNAME record pointing the root to my micro blog URL, then added a CNAME record pointing the “weblog” subdomain to my micro blog URL. Then I went to design>domain name and changed the url to “weblog.restlesslens.me,” but when I click “Update Blog Settings,” the little wheel just keeps spinning; the change never sticks. I admit I have lots of posts and uploads…
It seems like the change has been partially made, as my photos on the “Uploads” page in micro.blog have all disappeared (as the warning on the design page states), but the new URL has never worked. I get an SSL_ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR_ALERT when I visit weblog.restlesslens.me, so maybe its related to my certificate? I’ve waited a couple weeks to see if anything changes to no avail. I changed the blog settings a few times (I hope that didn’t complicate things). Retried inputting the DNS records. I even emailed help when I first had the problem, but never heard back. I don’t want to be a pain about it, but it would be nice to resolve the issue.
Thanks to anyone who has advice!
Sorry, this is likely the same thing with Micro.blog essentially “timing out” when updating the domain name. I’ll manually fix it for your account. Thanks for your patience!