A few years ago, when we began to offer domain mapping—serving a WordPress.com blog on your domain, like example.com—we omitted DNS control because we didn’t count on many people needing it. Soon we tired of saying “no” to users wanting email on their blog domains so we added limited support for Google-hosted email. Recently we tired of saying “no” to users wanting DNS control so today we deployed a DNS editor for custom domains.
This free enhancement is available to everyone who uses domain mapping on WordPress.com. The ability to add some common DNS records (MX, TXT, CNAME, A) opens the door for services hosted elsewhere to work under the same domain as your blog. Integrating other hosted services with your domain, such as email (you@example.com) or other kinds of web content (wiki.example.com), can make your dot-com a more powerful branding tool. We hope it makes WordPress.com a better choice for bloggers all over the internet.
WordPress.com News 
Like 🙂
Wow.. I am wordless.. You guys rock!
Thank you so much. I’m guessing this will save us tons of headaches with Google mail not recognizing our passwords when logging in from other computers.
For those of us, with Google mail mapped, please direct us to instructions for changing our mail map.
Thank you so much for keeping wordpress.com fresh.
Janice
Zumba Contra Costa
The old Google mail records should still work just fine. You’ll see them if you open the DNS editor.
Very useful, especially being able to integrate other services, thanks!
OK… If I understand (I´m new), as I have my domain and blog hosted with WordPress.com, I can register my email services with another server (for example Fasthosts) and work with my own email address me@mydomain.com? So I would manage my web content in WordPress.com and my email with the other server.
Please could someone explain me in simple language what do I say to the email company? (what is it that I´m buying) What settings do I need to change at WordPress dashboard? Or the settings need to be changed at the server who is managing my email?
The settings you need are going to be called DNS records or, more specifically, MX records. Your email company will most likely provide these in a FAQ entry or documentation.
Thank you!
Nice!
Waaaaait. I hope that wasn’t an April Fool’s gag…
Excellent! I have a domain name registered with you, and this provides more value for me.
Nice 🙂
Hmm…
Seems like we need to consider a self-hosted WP
Great, keep working
🙂
Great, I’ll try that with my domain venezuelatina.com. Is there any tutorial for the non-completely-geeks?
There are documentation links on the DNS Editing page. If that doesn’t get you through, there are the forums and Support. Good luck! 🙂
Looks good.
Interesting stuff!
It’s a good improvement. WordPress is going better and better.
@jabierans: your email company will give you MX records which you can add in your wordpress domain page (see in the picture above). once you have the MX records, just add those carefully and your email should start working as soon as records propagate. and if you want to use your own mail domain like mail.yourdomain.com then add a CNAME “mail” (get this record from service provider). i hope this helps you.
*scratches head*
I should come back on April 2nd and re-read this.
Astounding!
A very logical move in anticipation of WordPress 3.0, thank you for constantly being forward thinking.
Thanks!
woohoo!
I’m also a newbie and am not sure I understand what the benefits of this feature are or how I would use it. I have a custom domain (through WordPress) for my blog and have used Yahoo email for many years. I don’t plan to change my email address. Can someone please explain what I could do with the DNS records for my domain?
For example, custom DNS would allow you to use an email a such as yourname@yourdomain.com instead of yourname@yahoo.com.
This was a smart move. Lack of DNS control put me off of WordPress.com for a long time.
One day hopefully I’ll understand what all this means and how to use it…in the meantime I’m a lowly writer and blogger and grateful to wordpress for bringing my words to my readers…
Thank you! That’s awesome! So nice!
This is a Huge Feature Great Work!!
It’s a total new experience… a great experience. WordPress moves closer to me.
awesome. wp is just getting better.
Thanks… great move… makes it more flexible… now all we need is Google Analytics or perhaps lijit analytics on WordPress.com and you guys will have the almost everything there is as a single package.
Thanks for listening..
Hey I just mapped my domain and WordPress is here with the DNS editing feature!
your guy fawkes moustache rocks.
Thank you guys, SO much! We’re very, very happy with your service. And it really is service!
Just keeps getting better. Thanks for your work. Cheers
That’s great~! I love this feature!
WordPress is really getting better and I am really satisfied with its superb service!
Thank you! Awesome stuff.
Glad you have this now as I have registered a few domain names for some of my blogs. Handy!
Another great WordPress.com improvement to help publisher and blogger. Thanks for special service
Looks like another step in the right direction!
good news for domain mapping users 🙂
Wow, I just did it – it was the easiest domain purchase & setup ever! Thanks WordPress.
I’ve been hoping for this for a long time. Thank you!
Wow, this looks awesome. I’m glad to see such good improvements on WordPress.
Very cool! This is change I get behind.
Sweet! Just brought my Tumblr blog under my domain. Good stuff, thanks!
@Andy Skelton & @KaushiK™ Thank U! Great feature
Great, Awesome stuff. Thanks for great service.
Over my head for now…but that’s ok. Thanks! 🙂
What is DNS…??? And how to use???
???
Sorry, I am so technically dumb.
Basically, DNS are the records that connect a domain name, such as example.com, to the web server or email server that is setup to serve your website or handle your email. Check out the DNS page on Wikipedia for more information.
wow. this is great!
Snapshot editing NOT deployed, but it’s all good!
Hm, a bit over my head as well… 😛
I don’t have much of a concept of how this new facility will benefit me….. but I do have an immense understanding of how much being a member of WP benefits me. WP rocks! … in every direction. I love being in this amazing and wonderful community, where I can write and reach out to others and feel their own posts reaching out and touching me as I read them. Whatever DNS brings it can only be beneficial and add to the treasures already available in WP’s treasure chest.
Thank you WordPress ! 🙂 🙂 🙂
John
Hmmmm……sounds complicated and luckily not sure I’ll need it soon!!
An answer to my prayers!
This is great. I wish I fully understood the implications!
Really glad you folks added this, been wanting it for a long time! Thanks WordPress 🙂
Cool!
I waited for this feature for quite some time, and now: there it is.
Thank you guys! ; )
Wow… Does this mean that now if we wanna run two or more blogs on WordPress using the root domain and different subdomains, we only have to map the root domain with WordPress?
Say I want to map blog1.wordpress.com to mydomain.com…
blog2.wordpress.com to subdomainX.mydomain.com… and
blog3.wordpress.com to subdomainY.mydomain.com.
From now on, can we run all these off one domain mapping?
Thanks!
Each blog still needs to have a mapping of its own.
Can someone please bring out a tutorial for non-geeks like me? I want to use this enhancement asap, but without tears!
Cool
now for future refference if perhaps we, me or anybody else wants to purchase their domain name on wp.com then for some reason later down the line would like to transfer the domain name and/or have it privately registered (which wp.com does’nt offer). How can one go about doing this if its bought here on wp.com first?
Our domain registration process allows you to transfer the domain away from us anytime after 60 days from purchase or change to your registration information.
Excellent! wordpress is the BEST!
Like someone said! An answer to prayers! 🙂
You folks keep making great strides – but when will you allow us to add something like The Library Thing to our wordpress.com blogs? Blogspot does it and doesn’t seem to have an issue. I’m getting tired of having to have a separate page to list what I’m currently reading and another page for what i have finished reading – how archaic. Please come up with something to enable us to use this widget.
Thanks
We’re adding new shortcodes and widgets all the time to WordPress.com; thanks very much for your suggestion.
Sorry to be naive, but what I would like to do is move my blog to its own domain (say smogsblog.com) and have people be able to send email to @smogsblog.com such that this email is then all aliased/redirected to another email address (nothing to do with Google) which I already have through my ISP. This is real old-fashioned email, not web-based.
Is it possible to do this simply by buying the Domain Mapping service through you and then configuring DNS records? If so, could someone please explain how?
If not, why not? 🙂
You would need to already have an email account set up to be “listening” at whatever@smogsblog.com. The easiest way to do this would be to actually use Google Apps and then forward the emails you get to your other email address – which would also make all the email go through Gmail’s spam filtering.
I don’t have much of a concept of how this new facility will benefit me….. but I do have an immense understanding of how much being a member of WP benefits me. WP rocks! … in every direction. I love being in this amazing and wonderful community, where I can write and reach out to others and feel their own posts reaching out and touching me as I read them. Whatever DNS brings it can only be beneficial and add to the treasures already available in WP’s treasure chest.
Thank you WordPress !
John
Very nice and much appreciated. Of course, different from normal hosting environment: expect questions!
Great, i have a mapping domain in wordpress.. i can practice it soon
Huh, that’s pretty cool. Awesome. :’D
You guys rock in a major way. I’m going to move my blog over post haste.
As I have been with WP for about 2 years, I am satisfied with it…now with the new service I love it much more…Bravo WP!
DNS Editing… That’s something I miss when I started having my blog hosted by WordPress.com. When I had my blog privately hosted, my web hosting company was the one that edited the DNS settings.
Thanks for adding it to WordPress.com.
Ahahaaaaa! My propaganda for wordrpess in Greece worked after all! Now you really rock!!
Ryan,
Thanks for the response, but I don’t intend to make Google’s efforts at recording every aspect of my (and everyone else’s) life any easier than I absolutely have to; I’m also quite happy to do my own spam filtering. I guess if I want the email addresses I’ll have to go the whole hog and host my blog somewhere else that provides email forwarding. Which seems like a lot of hassle, so maybe I won’t bother for the time being.
If you can get just email hosting somewhere, that would do it, too; you wouldn’t necessarily have to host your site anywhere else. (That’s why we added this feature here.)
Thank you Ryan Markel and all the other helpful folks here at wp
This was really the only thing left on my wishlist. Thanks, ya’ll!
I am not the most high-tech guy around. Could someone explain what this feature entails ?
Please check out the Support page on Custom DNS.
It’s fantastic that this has finally been rolled out. It was really the last thing needed.
i really need some more detailed explanation
Please make sure you have read the Support page on this feature if you need more details.
Means I can move it away without losing fans 🙂
You could move a domain away before, these new features actually give you more options for when you keep your domain here.
good news, thanks so much
This is a great move on your part. WordPress does it better!! Thank you.