Is it necessary to annually renew a premium account?

  • Unknown's avatar
    magicalstew · Member ·

    Hello,

    We recently failed to pay GoDaddy our annual domain fee so our website went down. However we just paid GoDaddy for two more years of our domain (magicalstew.com). But our website still isn’t working. GoDaddy says the issue now has to do with WordPress. When we log into WordPress it says that our premium subscription expired May 2014 and we need to pay $100 to renew it.

    Do we need to pay $100 every year for our website? The only reason we are using premium is so that we can eliminate “wordpress” from the site address.

    We were wondering if there was anyway to bypass this or if we had to pay for the premium account in order to get our site back up.

    Thank you for your help.

    Shirin

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hi Shirin,

    Yes, in order for the Premium bundle to be active, you will need to renew it every year ($99). You can do that at any time from your Upgrades page here:

    https://magicalstew.wordpress.com/wp-admin/paid-upgrades.php?page=my-upgrades

    However, if you’re only using the Domain Mapping upgrade, which replaces the default .wordpress.com version of your domain with your custom domain, you can simply purchase the Domain Mapping upgrade ($13/yr). Just a note, you will lose the other upgrades included in the Premium bundle including the Space Upgrade, Custom Design, and VideoPress upgrade. You can read more about those here:

    http://store.wordpress.com/premium-upgrades/pro-bundle/

    Let me know if this is the route you want to go (just Domain Mapping upgrade), and I’ll make it happen!

  • Unknown's avatar
    magicalstew · Member ·

    Hi Jason,

    Thanks so much for your help. It’s been a while since I made the website, so I can’t remember if I’m really using anything in the premium package aside from having “wordpress” eliminated from the site address. I know I’m using the “Sundance” theme, which is free, and I don’t think our site is taking up much space. But I do remember tweaking certain things with the theme in the “CSS” section of WordPress, so I wouldn’t want to lose those changes.

    Would it be possible for you to look into that for me?

    Thank you,
    Shirin

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hi Shirin,

    You do have the following Custom CSS enabled:

    body, #page {
	background: rgb(255,255,255)!important;
}

    If you’re only using the Custom CSS portion (not uploading videos for example), I think you’re best bet is to ditch the Premium bundle and instead opt for the domain and the Custom Design upgrade, which would cost a total of $48/yr ($56 if you would like the private registration on the domain). You aren’t anywhere close to topping out on the free space for WordPress.com blogs so the Space Upgrade isn’t necessary.

    Let me know how that sounds to you! I’m happy to help you set it up.

  • Unknown's avatar
    magicalstew · Member ·

    Thanks Jeremy!

    Why don’t we go ahead and do the $56 with the private registration. How can we set it up so I can pay for it?

    Thank you,
    Shirin

  • Unknown's avatar
    jeremeylduvall · Member ·

    Hi Shirin,

    I apologize – I actually misspoke. Since the domain is registered at GoDaddy, the private registration doesn’t apply. You would need to take care of that at GoDaddy (and pay for it there) if you would like.

    As for WordPress.com, you’ll just need to purchase the Domain Mapping upgrade and the Custom Design upgrade for a total of $43/yr. You can purchase the Custom Design upgrade under your Dashboard by visiting Store -> Store. Then, you can follow the instructions here to map your domain:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/

    Give that a try and let me know if you run into any trouble!

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