How Do I Start a Free Site?

  • Unknown's avatar
    remainingnovel · Member ·

    Hi. I already own my domain name through hostgator. It was my understanding that using wordpress to build my blog would be free. But when I began to set it up, I get taken to a payment page.

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    delfrag · Member ·

    Hi there,

    You can build a free site hosted here in WordPress.com, but having a free domain, equals having a yourdomain.wordpress.com site.

    If already own your domain and want to build the site you will need a paid plan to map your domain:

    https://wordpress.com/support/domains/#add-a-new-domain-to-my-site

    You don’t need to create another site – you simply need the inexpensive Domain Mapping Upgrade. In layman’s terms, domain mapping just means pointing example.com to your anyaddress.wordpress.com site, so when your friends visit example.com they will see your super-cool site hosted at WordPress.com, and example.com will remain the visible address.

    That’s it!

    • It doesn’t matter where you registered your domain – you can still map it to your WordPress.com site. Check out How to Map an Existing Domain.

    Here’s some information about the plans

    Or maybe you are asking about the open source software of WordPress.org, in that case you can ask in the right forum: https://wordpress.org/support/forums/

    Hope this helps!

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    One thing to correct: to have your domain be your primary domain, you do need a paid plan. Otherwise, your domain will redirect to your free *.wordpress.com URL.

    I hope that clarifies things!

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