Hoping to get old username back

  • Unknown's avatar
    philippbatalliacreative · Member ·

    Today, I just signed up for wordpress, and initially used my name for the username. My intent was to create a wp page for a business name AND a separate one for personal. I then changed my name to my business name and am now no longer able to register my personal name, and the error message says that it is already registered or reserved.

    I know that the FAQ says it cannot be recovered, but does anyone know if there is anyway WP can help get it back, especially since I just did the switch with this intention?

    Thanks very much!

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Change Your Username

    Once you change your username you will not be able to change it back and the old name will not be available for you or anyone to use.

    So, unfortunately, no. Sorry for no better news.

    In any event, if you want to entirely separate your business and private sites, you will want to create a new account using a different username (obviously not the one you can’t recover) with a different email address.

  • Unknown's avatar
    brookedot · Member ·

    Thanks Jen!

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    @bdukes-given that the message when looking at philippbatallia.wordpress.com is

    The address philippbatallia.wordpress.com cannot be registered. Sorry, that site is reserved!

    rather than the usual “The authors have deleted this site” message, if it is the OP who registered it, perhaps it can be un-reserved for him? Thanks for looking!

  • Unknown's avatar
    rachelmcr · Member ·

    The site address is linked to the username, so once the username is changed (and the old username is unavailable) the site address matching that old username is also unavailable. There isn’t a way to un-reserve that site address for someone else to use.

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hi @rachelmcr- not to argue the point (well, maybe just a little), in the past when people have changed their username and the old site/username was deleted, then there was no hope of re-cooping the username. That doesn’t seem to be the case here since the site URL is reserved? (Unless it isn’t the original OP that it’s reserved for, of course.) :)

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