How To Set Up A Custom Domain on Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the fastest growing, free blog services available and makes creating a blog type website extremely easy. But did you know you can attach your own domain name (ex. yoursite.com) to your Tumblr account?

Tumblr’s website explains how this is done, but if you’re interested in seeing this with a little more explanation – read on:

There are basically 3 ways you can set this up.

Tumblr subdomains – yourname.tumblr.com

This is the easiest way to add a domain name and is completely free. Just log into Tumblr and select the “Blog Settings” button.

The second section is called “URL”. There you will find a simple box to select a subdomain and tie it to your Tumblr account. Scroll to the bottom and select “Save” and you’re done.

Tumblr custom URL – yoursite.com

First go register a domain name if you haven’t already. You can do this through a variety of services like hover.com or godaddy.com. There are many options for what service you use – they all more or less do the same thing – they just reserve your domain name for a small fee. You don’t need any add-ons unless something like private registration is important to you.

Once you have your domain name set, you’ll need to customize the DNS records. These records should be customizable from the service you used to register the domain. Look for a link for something like “DNS Control” or “Custom DNS”.

When you get to your DNS control panel you’ll see a list of “records”. These records basically direct traffic for services like your web host, email or FTP. We’re going to work with the A record.

You’ll want to modify the A record to point to 66.6.44.4 – this is Tumblr’s IP address.

After you have saved this record, go back to Tumblr and select “Blog Settings.”

You’ll want to tick the box that says “Use a custom domain name” and enter your domain.

Click “Test your domain.” If any problems arise this will do a check and let you know. When your test returns successful, scroll to the bottom and click “Save.”

Tumblr Sub-domain – ex. whatever.yoursite.com

This is a nice option if you’ve got a website you want to add your Tumblr account to as a section. Say you want to add a blog to your existing site and you’d like search engines to index your tumblr blog along with your existing content.

You can create a sub-domain to do this.

As in the example above you want to go to the site where you got your domain name and modify the DNS settings.

We will need to add a CNAME record. You’ll want to add a new record to do this.

Add a CNAME record and point this to “domains.tumblr.com”.

Go to your Tumblr account and click “Blog Settings.”
Click the box that says “Use a custom domain” and enter your subdomain – ex “whatever.yoursite.com”
Click “Test Your Domain”

Any problems will return in the test – once this is successful you can scroll down and click “Save”

You should be good to go.

Remember if you are bringing tumblr into and existing site, you’ll need to create links to get to it. But other than that its pretty painless!