How can I obtain ownership of a domain owned by someone else?

  • Unknown's avatar
    fwordsblog · Member ·

    There’s a domain I want to map to WordPress. It’s currently owned by someone else and is registered under that person’s name until 2012, however I believe that person no longer requires the domain.
    If the current owner is agreeable, how would we go about transferring ownership to me? I do know how to contact the owner.
    Sorry, this isn’t strictly a WordPress question but I can’t think how to find out the answer otherwise!
    thanks!
    Blog url: http://elmshades.wordpress.com/

  • Unknown's avatar
    evarlese · Member ·

    Hi there,

    You would first have to contact the owner of the domain to see if they would be willing to transfer ownership to you. Then, the domain owner and yourself would need to contact the domain registrar for information regarding the process for transferring ownership.

    Hope this helps!

  • Unknown's avatar
    fwordsblog · Member ·

    thanks for that. It’s the bit about the actual transfer that I was puzzled about. I’m guessing from what you say that it’s a simpler process than I was imagining – if both parties are agreeable then the registrar won’t make difficulties about switching ownership across? I suppose they get asked to do this sort of thing quite often so there might be a straightforward procedure.

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    yes, as long as both parties agree, the transfer process is pretty painless.

    Unfortunately, we can’t accepting incoming domain transfers at WordPress.com, but once you do transfer the domain to your registrar, you can map it here following this guide: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/map-existing-domain/

  • Unknown's avatar
    fwordsblog · Member ·

    thanks! I’ve already mapped a domain to WordPress, which makes me more confident about being able to do that. It was SCARY as I’d never done anything like it before, and it took me a while to plod through it, but actually it wasn’t as hard as I’d feared!
    Also the ability to set up Google to handle the email account from my old domain was very useful, though even more scary for someone who’s not used to all this techie stuff!
    Any chance of you changing the rules so you can host incoming domains? I’m sure it would be very useful to a lot of people?

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    It would definitely be a great thing for everyone, but unfortunately the inability to accept incoming transfers is a technical restriction outside of our control.

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