Google Sites map www subdomain This address is already being used ?? But it’s not..

This was a real doozy.

All I want to do is map www to the site so it seems like normal navigation for anyone to access the site from the wild outside world, but it seems Google has already decided that I cannot do so. This has kept me busy for at least 17 minutes this morning.. but thanks to some 1337 Googling skills I found this little post which outlines the entire solution.

JHaaIt was mentioned by “nguarda” in this thread: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?tid=6e50a1967c23598c&hl=enThe solution seems to get at a strange bug under the surface here, but regardless, it worked for me.  Here are the steps, slightly cleaned up from nguarda’s post: If you are experiencing the “This address is already being used” issue even though no address mappings exist for “www” (or whatever subdomain you’re trying to use), then try this out: 1. Make sure a record exists at your domain host pointing “www” to “ghs.google.com.”. 2. In the dashboard for your domain, click “Service Settings > Sites”.  Where it says “Web address    Your users can access Sites at: ” click “Change URL”. 3. Select the second radio button and enter “www” in the text box (resulting in www.example.com) 4. Save the changes, and then go back and return the url to its original, default setting (by checking the first radio button). 5. Now attempt to add a mapping for “www” in sites: Click “Service Settings > Sites”, click “Web address mapping”, “Add a new web address”, and add the correct mapping for “www”. If all goes well, you will no longer see the “This address is already being used” message, and the mapping will work fine. Please publicize this solution.  I’ve come across lots of people experiencing the same problem.

Many thanks to nguarda and JHaa.

Works like a charm.

Adrian