How to Get a Customized Domain Name for WordPress.com Blogs?

There are many bloggers who blog on a blog provided by wordpress.com and wanted to get rid of the free sub-domain which wordpress.com offers to them. Read on this blog post of mine to know how to get a customized domain name for wordpress.com blog?

As we were discussing the different types of blogs a blogger can have, that a blogger can either have blog on Blogger; no matter if it is a free BlogSpot sub-domain blogs or customized domain name encrypted with blogger background; or can also have blog with WordPress; either a free wordpress.com sub-domain blogs just similar to the BlogSpot sub-domain blog, or a customized domain name with the same wordpress.com background, or can have self hosted wordpress.org blog.

I am sure the readers of my blog are already aware about my opinion about the best blog and that is having a self hosted, customized domain name blog, which runs on WordPress.org software.

So as we already discusses about how a blogspot.com free sub-domain blog can be converted into a customized domain name blog using the same back-end of Blogger program; in the following blog: How to Move Blogspot Blog to Your Own Domain Name?

Today I am going to discuss about how to get a customized domain name for your wordpress.com blogs?

How to Get a Customized Domain Name for WordPress.com Blogs? 

As we all know that WordPress, the world’s number one blogging platform, provides us free blogs with a free URL, which is normally like myblog.wordpress.com.

To enhance their blog, while utilizing the same benefits of WordPress.com back-end, many bloggers want to shift this blog to their own customized domain name. Some bloggers are also there who want to get rid of this wordpress.com extension and wanted to blog on their own domain name like myblog.com, but then they don’t want to go ahead with the liabilities and expenses of having a self hosted WordPress blog.

Now let me tell you all the benefits which you can get with this custom domain name?

Why Custom Domain Name? 

Well, there are some obvious reasons why anyone can be inspired to change their blog address to a customized domain name from the free sub-domain blogs either by wordpress.com or by blogspot.com, and here are those reasons:

Attention from Search Engines 

As we already discussed in my last blog that search engines normally consider free blogs as a blog written by some less-serious bloggers; and hence search engines don’t give them much value in search results.

Thus, to get the attention from search engines, which obviously your blog deserves, you need to upgrade your blog from a sub-domain structure to a purely customized domain structure. This becomes the primary reasons why a blogger want to upgrade their sub-domain blog to a customized domain name.

Attention from Readers 

Apart from getting the attention of search engines, bloggers also required to get the attention of their readers. To be very frank, no matter how good you write, no matter how interesting your blogs feel to your readers, it normally becomes hard for your readers to remember your blog name if it is something like yourblogname.blogspot.com or yourblogname.wordpress.com.

On the other hand if you blog on your own domain name, no matter what back-end you are using, people will surely remember your blog name if they like it. Obviously youblogname.com is quite easier to get attention than yourblogname.wordpress.com.

Other than this, if your blog is featuring in search results, people normally ignore clicking on a free blogs, as normal perception is that since it is a free blog, you won’t expect to get serious stuffs from it. Thus to get the attention of the search engine visitors as well you need a customized domain name.

Cost Effective 

We all think alike as far as costing is concerned. To save the costs of web hosting, which normally goes around $3 to $175+ per month, we usually go with this option as well.

Shared hosting costs less, but then you won’t get all the features and facilities with shared hosting, so if you want to get a VPS hosting or a dedicated server for a blog, it will certainly make a hole in your pocket. Thus if you truly want to save money and get all the benefits which I mentioned above the best option is to invest a few bucks on domain name only.

You can get wordpress.com or blogspot.com back-ends with your customized domain name and you can get rid of the hosting costs with your blog.

Easy Maintenance 

Not only self hosting is a bit costly, but it also need good amount of maintenance and efforts to run it. Thus with a domain name and a back-end of wordpress.com or blogspot.com you can easily manage your blog.

After explaining so many benefits you might question me then why the hell I always suggest having a self hosted blog, when we can get so many benefits from this solution of having a customized domain name and using the same blogging platform which we are using right now?

Honestly, if I would sit to explain this, then it will also become a lengthy blog post, so we will discuss it with another blog post. Meanwhile simply saying it is true that you are having the domain name, but all your hard works are stored on some other person’s home. It can be possible, though it has less chance, that someday the person, who is keeping your data, might say a no to you to get those data only.

How will you feel if the bank where you have a locker and you stored all your hard-earned ornaments, refuse you to access your own locker and keep all the ornaments with them?

Obviously it won’t feel good, though we know that neither Google (which owns Blogger) nor WordPress is going to do so, but then it certainly has some probability.

But then as I said, let us not discuss it over here, I will come up with another post on the same, let us get back to our original discussion about how to get a customized domain name for your wordpress.com blog.

WordPress provides us a paid upgrade option. Through this you can get a option of either purchasing a domain name through WordPress.com only, which will cost you somewhere around $18+ on today’s date, or you can map your existing domain, or domain purchased at some place to your wordpress.com blog. You can also use a sub-domain to map with your wordpress.com blog, like say you have a domain mysite.com and you want a blog at blog.mysite.com.

Here are the three options which WordPress provides to us:

Registering a New Domain 

It is the simplest way to do so, visit http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/register-domain/ and you can easily get a domain name from WordPress and get the instructions for registering a new domain. You can register a domain instantly and it can be connected automatically.

Map an Existing Domain 

Instead of purchasing a domain from them you can also purchase it from somewhere else and map it over here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/

Remember that it is a paid service and currently they are charging $13 for it. It includes mapping one domain name per year basis to your blog.

Map a Sub-domain 

It is possible in case of a domain name which you own and already have some website which you don’t want to affect, thus you can install an existing wordpress.com blog to a sub-domain of this website.

To map a sub-domain you can check: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-subdomain/

Here are some of the TLD’s and their charges which you can book through WordPress:

Primary Domains Concept 

With WordPress you get one additional benefits. You can set your primary domain for your blog over here. Thus let’s say you booked around 20 domain names which are a common misspellings version of your original domain name then you can choose one out of them as your primary domain and all other domains will be redirected to it.

You can go to the My Domains section of your WordPress blog and can choose it: https://wordpress.com/my-domains/

Here is a snap of setting the primary domain:

Important Considerations before Upgrading 

Here are some important considerations which you need to take care before upgrading your domain:

Terms of Service 

While upgrading your domain name, you will get a custom domain name for your blog, but all the ToS applied on your previous blog will remain same on the new blog as well.

Custom Themes 

As it is one of the most popular drawbacks of WordPress.com blog, that you cannot upload custom themes, and upgrading to custom domain name won’t allow you to get the same. I am sure you all can understand my love towards having a self hosted blog now.

Custom Plugins 

As similar to wordpress.com blog you are not suppose to upload any plugins with your custom domain WordPress blog as well.

These two are the main reasons why I always suggest any blogger to have self hosted blog only.

Advertising Opportunity 

Another drawback with having a WordPress.com blog is that you are not suppose to get any advertisements other than the WordsAd program which WordPress offers to its blog. This or any such restrictions are not there on self hosted blog.

Thus I guess you all can now understand why I always suggest everyone to get a self hosted blog. Though still I will come up with another blog on discussing all these points very soon.

So what is your opinion about this blog post of mine? Please do share your comments about this blog post with us.