Why can’t I use a username that no one has?
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Hi! Sorry for the length but I figured more details are better, especially when I cannot give too many… I am trying to swap to a new account to separate it better from my old one (I had a blog for years but decided to start over with a new one. I came up with a new name and set it up. However, for ease of use on my phone as it’s all I had at the time, I started the new blog under my old account.). I decided it would be better to separate everything so today, I tried to set up an account using my email for my new blog, using the same username (in case that’s an issue) as my email for my username on WordPress (but not as my blog site name itself). It said ‘choose a different username. This one is not available.’ which was odd because there should be no reason for anyone to have this particular name… and apparently, they don’t… because I went to a different page after it wouldn’t let me use google to sign up either for whatever reason (the button was faded out) but I decided to type in the new username I wanted to see if perhaps I had done it myself months ago when I set everything else up. Nope. It said ‘User does not exist. Would you like to create a new account?’ Of course, I would! So I tried. It appeared to be working until I clicked the eye to check my password since it doesn’t use a second verify box, and while it didn’t say anything about not working this time before that, as soon as I clicked that, the ‘Choose a different username. This one is not available.’ message popped up in red under the username box… So I tried it with a couple X’s around the name and that worked… I figured I could go in and change the username afterwards. Nope. It still tells me that it is not available… I really would like to keep all of my blog information and names etc the same as recommended as I have been setting everything up. I don’t understand why this is not allowing me to use this name?!? It’s not like it matches my blog itself which is what I was concerned about, thinking maybe because of my first account, it was saying no to using the blog name but it’s a bit different so that shouldn’t be the issue either… I am at a loss… Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thank you so much!
P.S. I do not want to just change the display name, I know I can do that and that it will show up as the name I want, however, I want the username itself. Only looking for ways to do that. I figured I would mention that as it’s what comes back in searches. Thanks again!
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It’s very simple: on wordpress.com the username is a unique identifier which belongs to only 1 person. Even if that person closes his account, the username doesn’t become available to others to avoid confusion and identy theft.
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