By default, your free WordPress address is yourblog’sname.wordpress.com.  But whether this is a personal or a company blog, it can be nice to have your own domain to really brand your site and make it your own.  Or, if you already have another website and want to use WordPress as a blog for it, you could even add blog.yoursite.com or any other subdomain.

Adding a domain to your WordPress.com is a paid upgrade; registering and mapping a new domain to your account costs $14.97 a year, while mapping a domain you already own to your WordPress blog costs $9.97 a year.

Getting Started

Login to your blog’s dashboard, click the arrow beside Upgrades in the sidebar, and select Domains.

Enter the domain or subdomain you want to add to your site in the text box, and click Add domain to blog.

 

If you entered a new domain you want to register, WordPress will make sure the domain is available and then present you a registration form to register the domain.  Enter your information, and then click Register Domain.

 

Or, if you enter a domain that’s already registered, you will see the following prompt.

If this domain is a domain you own, you can map it to WordPress.com.  Login to your domain registrar account and switch your nameserver to:

Your DNS settings page for your domain may be different, depending on your registrar.  Here’s how our domain settings looked.

NS2.WORDPRESS.COM

NS3.WORDPRESS.COM

Alternately, if you’re wanting to map a subdomain, such as blog.yoursite.com to your WordPress blog, create the following CNAME record on your domain register.  You may have to contact your domain registrar’s support to do this.  Substitute your subdomain, domain, and blog name when creating the record.

Once your settings are correct, click Try Again in your WordPress dashboard.  The DNS settings may take a while to update, but once WordPress can tell your DNS settings point to it, you will see the following confirmation screen.  Click Map Domain to add this domain to your WordPress blog.

Now you’re ready to pay for your domain mapping or registration.  Depending on your purchase, the information and price shown may be different.  Here we’re mapping a domain we already have registered, so it costs $9.97.  Select your method of payment, enter your payment information or signin with your Paypal account, and continue as usual.

Once your purchase is finished, you’ll be returned to the Domains page on WordPress.  Try going to your new domain, and make sure it opens your blog.  If it works, then click the bullet beside the new domain, and click Update Primary Domain.  Now, when people visit your WordPress site, they’ll see your new domain in the address bar.  You can still access your blog from your old yourname.wordpress.com address, but it will redirect to you new domain.

Conclusion

Having a personalized domain is a great way to make your blog more professional, while still taking advantage of the ease of use that WordPress.com offers.  And, if you have your own domain, you can easily move to your site traffic to a different hosting provider in the future if you need to.  The process is slightly complicated, but for $15/year we found this one of the best upgrades you could do to your WordPress.com blog.

If you want to see an example of a site created with WordPress, check out Matthew’s tech site techinch.com.

And, if you’re just getting started with WordPress, check out our series on how to Start your WordPress.com blog, Personalize it, and Easily Post Content to it from anywhere.