My domain expired, and it looks like I've got to subscribe to a monthly plan to get it back

  • Unknown's avatar
    velhocronista · Member ·

    I know I gotta pay for a domain – and I did for a few years. Now, I have to renew it and I thought I’d just pay the usual $18 per year, but it seems a have to subscribe for at least a personal plan from $2,99/month. Is that it? Did that really change on WordPress?

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    Stand alone upgrades were discontinued last year. Now we need to register a plan and the price has changed.

    WordPress.com provides free blogs and hosts them free of charge. There are no bandwidth charges. All WordPress.com blogs come with 3000 megabytes (~3 GBs) of space for storing uploaded files and images. Free features are listed here https://en.wordpress.com/features/

    We have 4 different plans: free, personal, premium and business. All hosting is free regardless of which plan you choose. You can view all wordpress.com plan features here https://wordpress.com/pricing/ Add a plan for each of your sites here: http://store.wordpress.com/plans/.

    How domain mapping works
    Registering an underlying .wordpress.com URL first is required for domain mapping. What domain mapping does is providing a seamless redirect to the very same content under the new domain URL when a person clicks the old URL .wordpress.com to the original content. It can take up to 72 hours for domain propagation to take place throughout the internet but it doesn’t usually take that long. https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/

    Please go to https://wordpress.com/pricing/ to upgrade.

    If you have any difficulties see what Staff said here https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/custom-domain-89?replies=6#post-2882612

    You can use the Personal Plan, yes, but you need to add the plan first. If you add the domain first, Premium is selected automatically.

    Go to My Site ->Plans and buy the Personal Plan, and then you can go back and claim your free domain at My Site ->Domains ->Add.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    When you allow your domain expire, it then goes through a process that can take several months to complete described at https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-expiration/.

    I’ve tagged this thread in the sidebar with modlook for Staff attention.

    If you’re logged into the account that is associated with your expired domain, they will look up its status and get in touch with details.

    If you are not logged in under the correct username account then clear your browser cache https://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/#clearing-your-browser-cache and cookies https://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/#clearing-wordpress-com-cookies prior to logging into the associated account, and provide the domain URL here.

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The policy did change where you have to have a plan in order to use a domain with your site, but if you had a domain subscription before the update, you were exempt as long as you did not let your domain expire. I can take care of that for you since you had the domain before the change.

    However, I checked with our registrar and velhocronista.com is now in a redemption period. You can still renew your domain through us, but it is now a more expensive and complicated process to do so. Our registrar charges an $80 late renewal fee in addition to the $26 we charge to renew the domain. The good news is that this is still a chance of reclaiming the domain through this option.

    Your other option is to wait until the redemption period is over so that the domain becomes available for registration again. Domains are usually in redemption for approximately 80 days, but with this option, you run
    the risk of someone else jumping in front of you to purchase the domain before you get the chance.

    Please let me know if you want to proceed with paying the late renewal fee in the attempt to reclaim the domain name. This option is also time sensitive because the domain can be auctioned off to an expired domain bidder.

    I would suggest enabling the auto-renew option so that you will not have to worry about losing control over your domain in the future.

    Please visit the support page link for further instructions:

    Domain Expiration

    Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

  • Unknown's avatar
    velhocronista · Member ·

    Hey, darnelldibbles.

    Thank you so much for your help.

    My blog is for personal use only and paying 80 bucks for the domain is pretty of expansive, I must say.

    But there’s one more problem to this: it seems I lost more than the domain.

    You see, my blog had a lot of content and a very unique design, made by a friend of mine. But now, when I log into velhocronista.wrodpress.com, there’s only my old blog, with a whole different design and none of my newest content.

    What I’m trying to figure out is: did I temporarily lose only my domain (velhocronista.com) or everything else linked to my website is also lost?

    Please help me understand this. I have a ton of great work linked with my new blog and I just can’t afford to lose it.

    Thanks a million once again.

  • Unknown's avatar
    velhocronista · Member ·

    Hey, timethief. Thanks a lot for your help to. Sorry to not write your name on my topic answer. It is meant for you too.

    Thanks once again. You’ve been very helpful, as darnelldibbles.

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    You will not lose any of your content if you lose your domain – all of the content should be intact on http://velhocronista.wordpress.com. So, you’re saying the layout of your site changed once your domain expired?

  • Unknown's avatar
    velhocronista · Member ·

    Well, the content isn’t there. I’m not really sure how these things work, but I know I have a two separate things: a domain and a site platform under WordPress, and a web server which is not WordPress. Is that where all my content is? In my server?

    I must say I expected that losing my domain would only make me come back to my old web address, but for now I just can’t find any of my content – just my old blog.

    Answering your question, yes, the layout of my site changed completely when the domain expired. It took me back to my old one column blog.

    I hope I made myself clear. I’m sorry for my poor english and for not knowing enough about all of this.

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Ah, gotcha.

    So what you had was a domain registered with WordPress.com and it was masking your WordPress.com blog. The domain must’ve been pointing to the server of your self-hosted site. Now that the domain is now canceled, you are seeing the now unmasked WordPress.com site which probably has little to no content on it.

    You’ll need to contact the site host if you want the content located on their server. What I would recommend is exporting the content so that you’ll have it where ever you decide to move next, whether WordPress.com or another site host.

    Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

  • Unknown's avatar
    velhocronista · Member ·

    Hey, darnelldibbles. One more question, if you may. Do you know when my domain is gonna be available again, without me having to pay the late fee? How can I find that out?

    Thanks once again.

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    The date of availability is approximately 80 days after expiration. The domain expired on 1/29. So, I would say to start checking the status of the domain consistently about 3 weeks from now.

    Thanks,

  • The topic ‘My domain expired, and it looks like I've got to subscribe to a monthly plan to get it back’ is closed to new replies.