Verifying 1and1 Site Ownership with Google Apps

Hello freens. I purchased bossylobster.com from 1&1 recently with the intent of hosting it on Google App Engine. I soon found out how delightful this process is. I made a 0.1 version for my site at bossylobster.appspot.com and decided to launch by clicking Add Domain in the Application Settings.

Application Settings

After clicking this I was greeted with a note:

You must sign up for Google Apps to register this domain or prove that you already own it.

Great, so now I had to sign up for Google Apps. (As a side note, at the time this seemed an unnecessary, annoying wrinkle to add my App, but I now realize the integration with GMail, Calendar, Docs, etc. is fantastic.)

So here is my ish: prove that you already own it.

Yesterday morning, I spent several hours trying to verify ownership of bossylobster.com (which I had purchased a week prior). While I realize the DNS propagation process takes some time, I didn't want to try one method, wait 24 hours and then realize at that point it hadn't worked.

So, Google Apps gives four options on how to verify:

Create a TXT record
Upload an HTML file to a specific path on your site
Add a <meta> tag to your home page
Verify using your Google Analytics tracking code

Well, since I hadn't set my website up, the last three options were off limits to me (or so I thought). I had a bare minimum package from 1&1, so hosting was pretty much off limits. Apparently I picked one of the inept domain hosts because they don't support creation of a CNAME TXT record!! A quick Google search reveals

Yes, we do understand what an SPF record is. Unfortunately we do not support in on our hosting plans. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Verify Ownership Panel

So here I am back to square one, just trying to prove I own something, an inherently basic task made incredibly frustrating. Hopefully I can help people avoid some frustration with the following instructions.

Open terminal and change into the directory with code for bossylobster (your site).
Create a Django project in that directory via the command
```
[sudo] django-admin.py startproject bossylobster_django.
```
(If you don't have Django or you are using Windows, read these install instructions, but DON'T SET UP A DATABASE, not necessary here. For a more detailed tutorial see this page. Also note, startproject is the function name in the django-admin module and bossylobster_django can be replaced with your project name. 1. Change the file bossylobster_django/urls.py to:
```
from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns
from django.conf.urls.defaults import url

urlpatterns = patterns('',
  url(r'^$', 'bossylobster_django.views.index', name='home'),
)
```

Change the file bossylobster_django/views.py to:

from django.http import HttpResponse

def index(request):
  content = '\n'.join([
    '<html>',
    ' <head>',
    '  <meta name="google-site-verification" content="XXXX" />',
    ' </head>',
    ' <body>',
    '  Hello world!',
    ' </body>',
    ' </html>',
  ])
  return HttpResponse(content)

where XXXX should be replaced by the content value provided by Google.

Determine your internal IP address for use in step 6
Determine your router's (external) IP address for use in step 7
Set up a port forwarding rule in your router for port 80 (websites) with the IP address you found in 4
(After logging in to 1&1) change IP for bossylobster.com to point to your router (from 5)
From the bossylobster_django directory (or whatever you called it), run the server via
```
[sudo] python manage.py runserver 192.168.XX.YY:80
```
where 192.168.XX.YY is the IP you found in 6b.
Check to see if your change has propagated to DNS servers worldwide (wait until it has)
Upon propagation, login to Google Apps and verify via the meta tag

Bossy Lobster

A blog by Danny Hermes; musing on tech, mathematics, etc.

Verifying 1and1 Site Ownership with Google Apps

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