Google App Engine with a custom domain

So, you don't want to publish your brand new groundbreaking web app to the world with a boring old url like http://sydneyinlinehockey.appspot.com ?


Just say say you want to use your own custom domain such as sydneyinlinehockey.com.

One would think this would be a relatively simple and straight forward thing to do, but apparently not so...

First they make you sign up to Google Apps, then you have to prove you own the domain, then finally you have to tell them the domain name you plan to use, finally you have to update the details with your dns registrar so it points to google apps hosted website.

This was the tricky bit... so if anyone else wants to know how to do it, here's how I did it.

you need to create a CNAME record for your website,

eg:

www.sydneyinlinehockey.com

and point it to:

ghs.googlehosted.com.

Google app engine does not support naked domains, such as

http://sydneyinlinehockey.com.

to get this to work I setup a 301 redirect with my dns registrar, redirecting

sydneyinlinehockey.com

to

www.sydneyinlinehockey.com

voila.

just posting this cos I spent hours googling this...