Trick Or Treat: Domains
Our most requested feature has nearly always been the ability to change a blog’s URL. We’ve been working on a system that lets you do just that and I am pleased to tell you that it is almost ready!
Just to clarify what I’m talking about, we are making it possible to give your WordPress.com blog a different URL. For example, your blog can live at yourdomain.com or blog.yourdomain.com instead of yourblog.wordpress.com.
Domain registration and mapping are sensitive, technical operations and we want these processes to be easy. To that end, the development and testing have to be thorough. While I was setting up test domains it occurred to me that I ought to set them up on live blogs rather than test blogs. The more traffic the systems gets during testing, the more confidently we can release the feature.
So here’s my idea: I’ll sneak into a few of your dashboards when you aren’t looking and give you a brand new domain based on your current one. If you like it, keep it as your blog URL until it expires or you renew it. If you don’t like it, you’ll be able to switch back to your wordpress.com domain. If you decide to keep it, all of your old URLs (permalinks) will still work. They’ll simply redirect visitors to the new URL.
It’s a bit of a treat and a bit of a trick. This is for testing, remember? Something might go horribly wrong and your blog might become inaccessible to visitors from Bangalore or Biloxi. You might not like the domain. You might be such a fan of WordPress that you miss your old subdomain. In any event, you will be able to switch your blog back to its old URL any time. The free URL also expires after one year, so you’ll have to pay to renew it or lose it. Tricky, huh?
I’ve set up a new domain for a friend already (Rhieinnon) but I don’t have that many friends so I’m just going to cruise comments on the top blogs for victims. First victim: Raincoaster. Watch out!
p.s. Matt had the idea of making the new domains free for a random selection of people who sign up. More details when we release the feature. (Soon!)
- October 22, 2006
- Domains, Testing, WordPress.com
WordPress.com News 
A good idea….but I have found no appararent disadvantage to having .wordpress. in my domain name for the blogs. I guess I need to be convinced that there is an obvious advantage.
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Since we do lose our pagerank and start over, I say no.
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Wouldn’t you be interested in trying out on more scenarios? I could add a slightly longer loop. I aready own a domain, and curently am using a HTML redirect on the index.htm pointing to my WordPress blog. Which means I would need to make the changes in my Domain Registrar dashboard. Interested? 🙂
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Looks like this will be a nice feature. Any word on if this will be a paid feature or another free update?
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whoa! thats.. awesome!!
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WOW! I come from Diwali holiday and there’s a WP Diwali treat running! Kewl! I must say WP has always been the best! Kewl!
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ME oh please pick ME !!
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You can always use my http://yogin.wordpress.com WordPress blog as a test for this. I would eventually like to see http://www.illuminedviews.com as the domain that all my readers can see my postings at. Feel free to give me a trick or treat if you want Andy. Good job! I’ve been waiting some time for this feature to happen, especially when you first mentioned its possibility. I’ve gotten sick of Typepad and Movable Type not offering enough themes or originality in its blogging software.
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Thanks guys for all the work you put in! Cheers!
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Wow! Thanx for coming up with exciting features time after time. You make my trip here truly enjoyable 🙂
Keep it up, WordPress!
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Choose me for the free one, I said before but couldn’t you add some ads to weblogs and then give us features free.
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Yeah! I like this. I’d be happy to be a tester if you’d like.
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that’s awesome…
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I am waiting for this, great news. Can you put my blog http://jagjitsingh.wordpress.com for testing too, i have already got domain http://jagjitsingh.us you won’t need to get new one.
Amar
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I’d like to be picked for testing !!!
Great greate great idea to offers free domain name so someone !! Great !
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oh, i hope they’ll sneak into mine
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Pick me guys! 😀
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keeping the original subdomain as a working site is really important so i hope this is taken into consideration.
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This is very nice of you.
Please get into my dashboard too 🙂
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I would love to try it out.
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I already have a domain, but I find this just great. Keep up the good work.
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Funny 🙂 And nice 🙂
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Great news! I’d love it if you tried it on me 🙂
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Great news! We’ve been waiting for this! I put my hand up if you’d like to try it on my site 🙂
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molto interessante, stiamo a vedere… 🙂
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that’s great.
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what happens if the .com addresses are taken by someone else?
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wow.. how about a room for more plugins?
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Sweet!
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please make my blog http://www.thexboxdomain.com thank you!
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that’s great. I was thinking this would be about Halloween. My birthday is Halloween. A domain name would make a good birthday present.
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I have the same problem as ‘Airway’. I already have an URL redirecting to the wordpress page, that URL (www.wildstylefm.nl) is even in my header. So if my wildstyle.wordpress.com URL got changed my .nl URL would become useless and my blog a lot less accessible to visitors. It’s a nice feature but please do not consider me a candidate. Unless I misunderstood something?
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Can’t wait for this cool stuff. But hopefully it’s a free feature.
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Great feature! I was expecting it 🙂
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I would like to raise my hand and volunteer.
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This is awesome! I would love to have freshgroundknits.com as my blog address-I hope this works out and we have the option to select this in the future.
Great job!
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Well Done! Keep-up the good works!
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Sounds like a good idea to me!
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Interesting idea.
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We keep talking about customer lifecycle, loyalty and going on to the height of customer satisfaction by pampering customers.
Hold on? But we don’t pay you!! This is amazing!!
Love you guys!
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i’d love one.. 🙂
http://www.payattentiontome.com
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whoa! almost too good to believe. What next?
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Interesting idea. I´d like to try it.
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Great feature! Yes, would like to participate 🙂 Thank you guys!
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cool~
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Absolutely awesome, the goodies you guys dish out for us.
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A nice feature for those that don’t have a domain routet to their wordpress blog already.
If you already have a wordpress.com blog and also already have a domain registered, you can route the domain to you wordpress blog either by a javascript redirect or by setting the routings at the webprovider. Most have some sort of web interface where you set the routing.
For all others, I suppose it’s quite fun to find some new domain routet to their blog… I suppose the costs for the domain won’t be that high…
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Sounds cool.. Wish to try.
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own domain. sounds cool. want one!
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man, how outstanding, I WANT A *BRAND NEW* TEST DOMAIN!! USE MY BLOG!! jejej
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This is cool! I have always dreamed of http://www.chilledsteam.com … mmm, hint, hint!
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Brilliant. Perfect festival gift. Many thanks…over and over again
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I too would love to be chosen, speaking a new and VERY enthusiastic blogger, who is approaching middle age and needs to feel loved 🙂
http://kystorms.wordpress.com/
a loving user of WordPress 🙂
kystorms
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I told Bush that he should stop tapping into my phone calls… you guys, however… feel free to invade my privacy anytime you want.
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I too would like to be included if you are are looking for new people to do this for.
kystorms
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oh man. nice. domains.
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Is there any magical treat WordPress.com can perform with domains to try to trick China’s Great Firewall into allowing WordPress.com based blogs lacking “wordpress.com” in the URL through?
I’m using the Firefox extension FoxyProxy along with the Tor proxy/anonymizing network to route selective URLs pass the Chinese internet censors. Now that some WordPress.com URLs will no longer contain “wordpress.com” I’ll have to manually allow each one if I navigate to it from a non-wordpress.com containing link.
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You do NOT lose your pagerank, because the wordpress subdomain remains. You just get a new domain as well. I just checked: PR for raincoaster.com is 0, PR for raincoaster.wordpress.com is still 6.
And, like I said, I’ve had several direct hits from search engines looking for “raincoaster” which never happened before. The big advantage of this is that people looking for you only need to look for one word, in my case Raincoaster, rather than “oh, and is she on blogger or wordpress or myspace or…”
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Would you be able to switch an existing domain to do this? I have a domain that forwards to my blog but it’s masked so you can’t point to a specific page.
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Awesome!
I’d love to participate.
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Awesome idea! feel free to use me do some some testing on as well… I’m always open to research 😉
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Sweet. Id like to try too. 🙂
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Sweet. Id like to try too.
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wow itz a really lovely feature
hope everyone gets it =)
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That is great news! I’ve got anatkinson.com pointing to my blog now and would love to skip the subdomain if possible. Having my own domain would give me yet another reason to skip paid hosting (and keep recommending wordpress.com over Blogger, TypePad, etc.)
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This is awesome! I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t want that domain name.
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That’s great news! I’d pay for this service too (at a price less than budget hosting). You can experiment with my blog! I’ve got anatkinson.com pointing to my blog now. There are only a couple of things I miss by not running my own wordpress installation, and of those things, my own domain name is the one I care most about. This is an excellent feature that will differentiate Wordress.com from free competitors like Blogger.
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Excelent news!I want to try it!
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Cool, this is probably the best feature to be rolled out..
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Sounds great!!! I haven’t even looked at the other post about this, so… LOL!
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Excellent news!, I would like to ty it!
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its worth trying . how much it will cost ???
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I have just shat myself with exitement. SRSLY
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http://drhaisook.com
— please! 🙂
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Hey, I forgot! My blog is one of WordPress’s best blogs (http://bestblog.wordpress.com/2006/05/20/dr-haisooks-brain-grooves/) — I think I deserve a free .com domain! 🙂
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Nice feature with a tweak of one year free usage. One of the major strategy of marketing, get your user used to your service so heavily then they end up paying you in long time one or other way.
Heads up….appreciate your initiative in this area. As blogger, never went to these levels in impressing customers. Keep it up..
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You got a looser right there… I went to the second “victim”‘s blog and I got this message on a black page: Invalid key.
Testing…
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Great – Volvox.com is available 😉
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OMG I’m getting to be more and more impressed with WordPress everyday!
As a professional developer, I recognize and respect the work they put into the system and provide it to the world for free.
Everythang for free!
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I can’t wait.
In fact you make a dream come true.
I was thinking to bey a domain and web space to get my own domain, but i love it here so much that I didn’t do it. And know I don’t need to do it.
When it comes out I’m one who’s going to try it.
Thanks for the new feature 😉
Dennis
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Nice !!! I hope I can get one too !
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Wow cool!
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as always, ya’ll rock…
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Can’t wait to see how many people go crazy over a potentially free $8 domain 😉 haha.
(as always good work, keep it up!)
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Thanks for value-adding. Love ya!!
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Hey, hey, hey Andy — stop! You’re insane, I swear. Or why all this great development is gratis .. nada .. zlech???
Thank you great wordpress — thank you.
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thats pretty damn cool
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I am volunteering my blog to be a guinea pig. Go ahead, fiddle with my domain and dashboard. WordPress Rules!!!!
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Trick or Treat!!!!
This is very cool. I have just started out at WordPress and am in the process of moving archives over from another site. What a trip to think that I could randomly score a domain name. You are the epitome of blogging excitement.
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wow…all requesting
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You rock if I get one.
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pick me . oh oh pick me.
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great..!! I’ll be wait that 🙂
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pick meeee!!! heheh 😀
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superkalifragilistic-expiali-omg-seriously-that-is-such-a-damn-fine-move-you-guys-really-impress-me-docious.
Seriously guys, that is a pioneering move, and it really made my hairs stand on end.
WordPress puts the 2 in Web 2.0. It isn’t about flashy, buggy javascript, it is about taking the bull by the horns, flying it up a flagpole, and seeing if people rally around it.
Sorry, I think I went a little over my RDA of caffeine today.
Seriously, what an awesome great way, and I fully supprot this and I
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