Tumblr changed custom domain settings and after June 21 possibly millions of Tumblr blogs might loose custom domain urls if they fail to update the custom domain settings as advised by Tumblr. You might be aware that Yahoo! recently acquired Tumblr, a very popular free blog hosting service, which offers one of the easiest ways to start a blog.
Though it is not known how many blogs are on custom domains, it is unclear why after so many years Tumblr forces possibly thousands or even millions of its blogs on custom domains to switch to new settings … and remove the custom domains if they don’t! Note that this affects only bloggers who have chosen to use custom domain urls for their Tumblr blogs and does NOT affect those using Tumblr.com urls.
Tumblr Custom Domain Settings
When you use custom domains, it places the blog on your main domain name or a subdomain and gives you a URL like yourblog.yourdomain.com instead of yourblog.tumblr.com. So it is indeed a great idea to use custom domains to add multiple blogs to expand your brand identity.
We host 2 blogs on Tumblr and I received this e-mail from Tumblr which advises me to update my custom domain settings to keep my blogs online after June 21, 2013.
Hi there! We are making improvements to the way we serve our custom domain traffic and we need you to update your settings before June 21. Please point your custom domain to Tumblr’s IP: 66.6.44.4. If you do not make this update by June 21, your custom domain will no longer redirect to your blog. To learn more about how to do this, check out our custom domains help page. :) Your friends at Tumblr.
As I logged into my Tumblr dashboard today, there is an alert on top of the screen to update my custom domain settings. The custom domain help page gives all the details about the new configuration for custom domains.
In fact when you test domain settings, Tumblr does notifies that although current settings are working, there is a need to update CNAME settings for the Tumblr blogs.
As I check the DNS settings on my server, I had an A-record pointing to a different Tumblr IP. Now do I need to remove that and add a CNAME record. Will there be blog downtime while DNS propogation happens?
What happens if you do not update? I suppose the blogs will get back to the original tumblr url like yourblog.tumblr.com, so only the custom domains will disappear till you update the settings on your hosting WHM or domain name registrar. Which means the blog with your custom domain name url will disappear from search engines and will be reindexed as a tumblr url! So it is very essential to update your settings today.
Now with this change, although Tumblr has taken all efforts to send e-mails and also inform bloggers logging into their Tumblr dashboards, still there might be many Tumblr blog owners who might not be paying attention to this essential requirement or might not know how to fix these settings, and possibly thousands or even millions of Tumblr blogs on custom domains might go offline after June 21, 2013. Remember to fix your settings now… it takes only a few minutes.