Set Up A Custom Domain Name For Tumblr Blog

I think we all know about Tumblr, the feature rich and free blog hosting platform. It offers professional and fully customizable templates. It’ll be like ‘social network’ experience. If you want to make your Tumblr blog more professional and to give it a true identity, then using custom domain name is the best choice. Earlier we also shared how to setup custom domain name for Posterous and now we are going to see how we can set up a custom domain name for Tumblr blog/site.

Custom Domain Name For Tumblr

Tumblr Blog URL: http://blogname.tumblr.com

Custom Domain Name: http://blogname.com

If you don’t have a custom domain name, you can register one easily at GoDaddy. Confused about selecting a good domain name? Here are some tips for that.

1. Login to your GoDaddy account and go to your required domain name’s DNS Manager. Now don’t be afraid you just want to change the A record (or CNAME record) for your domain.

Click “Add Record” now.

Domain Configuration

1. Two Levels

If you want your blog URL to be domainname.com, then select Record Type as A (Host), type Host Name as @, and point to this IP address 66.6.44.4

Custom Domain Name For Tumblr - add dns @ tumblr

2. Three or More Levels

If you want your blog URL to be something like blog.domainname.com or status.domainname.com, then select the Record Type as CNAME (Alias), enter Alias name as blog or status, and point to domains.tumblr.com Host Name.

add dns record subdomain tumblr

Now that’s all you have to do in your domain registrar account (GoDaddy here). Now go to your Tumblr account.

2. Log into your Tumblr Account.

Go to the specific blog’s settings. There you’ll have option to use custom domain name for your blog.

custom domain tumblr settings

Type your domain name and test it. If everything is OK, then you’ll get a success message. If the configuration is still processing, you’ll get a message like this below. You don’t need to be afraid (again), this happens after re-configuring your domain. You should wait up to 72 hours for the changes to take effect.

Tumblr Domain Error

When you visit the subdomain or domain, you should see a Tumblr error page, that means the domain is correctly pointing to Tumblr, but that your blog hasn’t been configured to use it yet. It’ll take some time.

You can also redirect your Tumblr blog to a custom URL just in case if you need.

If you have any issues in setting up custom domain name for Tumblr blog, kindly let us know in the comments below.

7 thoughts on “Set Up A Custom Domain Name For Tumblr Blog”

  1. Hi, when I enter my subdomain into tumblr settings, I get this notification:

    This subdomain’s CNAME is not pointing to Tumblr. Please change the CNAME to: domains.tumblr.com

    Any advice?

  2. Pingback: Top 5 Websites To Easily Create A Blog [FREE]

  3. thank you! this has really helped us out. Currently at the last stage waiting for our domain to be configured by tumblr. I hope all works out! Kumar, you are a genius!
    -TWO-BROWNGIRLS

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