Buying a custom domain for a wordpress.com blog

  • Unknown's avatar
    bensiddall · Member ·

    Hi, my blog/website is bensiddallonline.com, I always wanted bensiddall.com but it was never available. I used WordPress to buy and map bensiddall.com and it will automatically renew this summer. To be honest I don’t know a great deal about web domains. Recently I received an email from “GoName” saying that bensiddall.com has become available for sale and it will be going into auction soon and I could register my interest and put an offer in first. If I were to buy this, would I be able to register it with my wordpress.com site and would I have to pay for storage and stuff or will I just be able to use it as I do now? I did check if it was available to buy through WordPress but it said it was already in use. Also what will the process of buying it involve and would you recommend it. I would appreciate any help from anyone as I really want to buy this domain but i’m not sure how things work with WordPress.

    Thanks,
    Ben Siddall

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there. If it’s on auction I don’t think you’ll be able to buy it through WordPress.com. If no one buys it at auction it should become available to register anywhere, including WP.com, but you might not want to take that risk, so you’ll rather have to buy it through the registrar that is auctioning it. But only buy the domain. You don’t need to buy hosting as you’re already hosted by WordPress.com.

    Once you own the domain you can then buy the domain mapping upgrade here to connect that domain to your WordPress.com site. You don’t need to cancel your current domain either, as it is possible to have more than one domain mapped to a WordPress.com site.

    See here for more info on domain mapping: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/

    And this support doc explains a bit more about how it works when a domain expires and gets auctioned off: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-expiration/

  • Unknown's avatar
    bensiddall · Member ·

    Hi, thanks for your response. I think what I will do is just keep an eye on it, if somebody does bit on it I will attempt to outbid them, if nobody bids then I will just leave it and hopefully register it through WordPress in the future.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    I would never get into a bidding war over an domain URL for a pêrsonal blog. There is a whole industry full of sharpies who squat on domains and charge insane amounts to purchase the URls from them.

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