Enabling Jabber Federated Chat to my Domain

I would like to have inte­grated chat ser­vices on my domain. Users can con­nect via any Jabber-able client and inter­act with friends on other mes­sag­ing net­works (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, etc.). How? Well, I have already mar­ried a num­ber of sub-domains to my Google Apps account (cal­en­dar, email, etc.) and that’s work­ing awe­some. Now for chat.forsbergville.com. At first I thought I would install a Jab­ber server on my host. Then I real­ized that Google Talk may be able to do the leg-work for me. I can marry chat to Google Talk now, but Google Talk is under-populated and I want those other networks.

Enter the process of fed­er­a­tion. Google Apps Admin Help tells me that:

From: How can my users chat out­side the Google net­work? — Google Apps Help

How can my users chat out­side the Google net­work?
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Google makes it pos­si­ble for your users to chat with peo­ple using other mes­sag­ing ser­vices through a process known as fed­er­a­tion. Go to Google Talk and open com­mu­ni­ca­tions to learn more about fed­er­a­tion and who we’re fed­er­at­ing with.

While we’re fed­er­at­ing with a num­ber of other ser­vices, some ser­vices aren’t cur­rently acces­si­ble through the Google Talk net­work, and your users won’t be able to chat with users of those services.

If you’d like your users to have the abil­ity to chat with peo­ple con­nected to the Google Talk net­work through fed­er­ated net­works, you’ll need to edit your Ser­vice (SRV) records. You don’t need to edit your SRV records for your users to chat with other Google Apps and Gmail users. SRV records are man­aged by your domain host. We sug­gest con­tact­ing your domain host to find out if you have access to SRV records and how you can make modifications.

When you enter the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion, make sure to replace gmail.com with your domain. Don’t replace google.com.

_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

Because there are many dif­fer­ent domain hosts offer­ing vary­ing options for SRV records, we rec­om­mend con­tact­ing your domain host directly for assis­tance. This includes enter­ing the SRV record data, assign­ing pro­to­cols and weights, and other con­fig­u­ra­tion ques­tions. Some domain hosts will allow you to copy and paste the infor­ma­tion above exactly as it’s offered while other domain hosts require gran­u­lar data entry.

I use GoDaddy to host both my web­server and domain. This trick is exclu­sively involv­ing the domain. So here you go:

How to Enable Mes­sag­ing Fed­er­a­tion on your GoDaddy Hosted Domain

1. Copy this code snip­pet to your favorite plain-text editor:

_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com.
_jabber._tcp.gmail.com. IN SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com.

2. Per Google’s instruc­tion in the cited quo­ta­tion above, change the “gmail” bits to your domain (Impor­tant to leave the “google” parts intact).

3. Save the file as a plain-text file.

4. Login to GoDaddy, get to your domain’s Domain Man­age­ment area, click “Import” and import the file.

5. Bask in your glory:

Imported SRV set­tings for Fed­er­ated chat