How to transfer or change your WordPress domain

For those thinking about changing websites with WordPress, there are two typical scenarios. Some users want to change provider but keep their WordPress domain; in this case, the entire website and its address is taken from one provider over to a new one. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, others are unhappy with their current web address and want to get a new domain for their website. The WordPress form being used also makes a dif­fer­ence, as trans­fer­ring a self-hosted WordPress website often works very dif­fer­ent­ly to a wordpress.com powered website. Read on to discover useful tips and tricks for suc­cess­ful­ly moving a WordPress site in each scenario.

Migrating from wordpress.com to a new host

There are many good reasons to transfer your website from a wordpress.com server to a new provider. Often, users find wordpress.com in­suf­fi­cient as it’s primarily geared towards private bloggers, CMS beginners, and users wanting to operate a simple website with as little effort as possible.

Operating a website via wordpress.com has some dis­ad­van­tages that can be avoided by using an in­de­pen­dent­ly hosted WordPress in­stal­la­tion. Users that want an in­de­pen­dent domain and more storage space, for example, could find them­selves con­front­ed with high costs when using wordpress.com. The con­sid­er­able lack of variety in plugins and themes presents another serious short­com­ing. In addition, you have no FTP access to your website files. Therefore, the wordpress.com CMS often fails to meet the re­quire­ments of more advanced users. 

Should you wish to host your website with a specially hired web hosting provider rather than wordpress.com, you need to move all the website content and the WordPress domain. Before changing to a new hosting provider, it’s essential that you back up your data on the wordpress.com CMS. For more in­for­ma­tion on backing up a WordPress website, read our summary of the best WordPress backup plugins. You also need to export all of the website’s content with the tool located in the ‘Tools’ menu under ‘Export data’. You will then be taken through an ad­just­ment process, which will enable you to import the website into your new WordPress in­stal­la­tion. Besides that, changing your WordPress domain follows the same pattern as in­stalling the CMS in the first place.

Changing providers with an in­de­pen­dent­ly hosted WordPress in­stal­la­tion

There are many great reasons to transfer a WordPress domain from one rented web server to another. Perhaps your current hosting provider doesn’t offer an adequate range of features, or it’s too expensive, or the server’s per­for­mance or customer service leaves something to be desired. Check out this handy guide on WordPress migration for a com­pre­hen­sive tutorial on trans­fer­ring a WordPress in­stal­la­tion.

New domain for a wordpress.com website

It’s possible to use a CMS variant on wordpress.com that is hosted free of charge. But in this case, WordPress will only grant you a subdomain for your website (i.e. website-xyz.wordpress.com). This can look am­a­teur­ish and may ward off potential visitors, par­tic­u­lar­ly for busi­ness­es who want to convey a serious image. For­tu­nate­ly, you can add your own domain (i.e. website-xyz.com) later for a fee.

WordPress also offers domain mapping as a service. This means linking an existing WordPress website to another domain that is already reg­is­tered as yours. Sub­do­mains can also be set up for an existing website. Read on to discover different ap­proach­es to changing your WordPress domain.

Reg­is­ter­ing a new domain with wordpress.com

The simplest way to obtain a new internet address for your WordPress site is to pay a fee for one through wordpress.com. This involves far less bu­reau­crat­ic work in com­par­i­son to in­de­pen­dent­ly reg­is­ter­ing a web address with a domain name registrar and then setting it up on wordpress.com (see domain mapping in the following section). Instead, the WordPress team takes over these tasks, making the process quicker and easier for website operators. The domain change occurs as follows:

1. Select the option ‘Domains’ in the menu and enter your desired domain. Once you’ve found a suitable web address, select ‘Add’.
2. Enter your e-mail address. This will allow you to manage all incoming messages to your WordPress dashboard.
3. Enter the requested personal in­for­ma­tion. These details will be passed from WordPress to ICANN, where you will then be reg­is­tered as the official domain owner. Next, choose whether you want this in­for­ma­tion to be reg­is­tered privately or publicly on the Whois database.
4. Once you’ve made your payment, you can choose your newly acquired address as your main domain under the option ‘Domains’. Your old address will remain active and, if entered into the search bar, will redirect to your new site. Reg­is­ter­ing your new address in the Domain Name System may take a few hours to complete.

One drawback is that WordPress only supports the specific domain endings listed here. The list includes many generic top-level domains such as .com or .net, but per­son­al­ized TLDs are un­avail­able. Despite this, internet addresses whose domain endings aren’t supported may be linked with the website via domain mapping.

Domain mapping with wordpress.com

Wordpress.com offers another fee-based service, which allows you to activate a domain that you’ve purchased in advance.  WordPress domain mapping is carried out as follows:

1. In the menu, select ‘Domains’ → ‘Add domain’ and then ‘Upgrade’. You can then enter your reg­is­tered web address.

2. The next step is to inform your current domain provider that you wish to link your domain with wordpress.com. To do this, you need to contact your domain registrar and state that your name server should be linked to the following address: 

• NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
• NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
• NS3.WORDPRESS.COM

If you are unsure about what to do, you can also contact your provider’s customer support service for further help. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, you can use the three addresses mentioned above to replace the name servers attached to your registrar account.

3. You can now specify your internet address as your primary domain under the ‘Domains’ section. It can take a few hours before your new domain is available.

Using wordpress.com services may be the easiest and quickest method of changing your internet address or domain provider, but it is also the most expensive route. Operating a self-hosted WordPress website is generally a lot more eco­nom­i­cal in com­par­i­son.

If you’re not wholly confident using content man­age­ment systems, there’s an al­ter­na­tive: some providers offer supported WordPress hosting. In this case, the provider takes care of security and main­te­nance. As a user, you have far less control over the CMS’s man­age­ment, but all the ad­van­tages of a self-hosted WordPress website (i.e. more plugins and themes).

Getting a new domain for a self-hosted WordPress website

There are various reasons as to why you might want to connect an in­de­pen­dent­ly hosted WordPress website to a new web address. You can do this manually, by setting up the new domain over the wp-config.php file, but this process can lead to problems with WordPress settings, themes, and widgets. To avoid these problems, you can change the domain via the WordPress database with a plugin designed for that specific purpose such as Du­pli­ca­tor or WP Migrate DB. The latter option is also available in four pro versions. These pre-tools enable a swift and pain-free move at various rates to suit a range of budgets, but it’s only worth the in­vest­ment if you regularly need to transfer or change your domain. In most cases, the two free plugins and other WordPress ex­ten­sions are perfectly suf­fi­cient. In addition to these changes on the WordPress database, it’s also necessary to make ad­just­ments with your hosting provider. You should ensure your new domain is connected to the WordPress folder on your server, and that you have set up an automatic redi­rec­tion from your old web address to your new one. Read more about this in our guide to URL redi­rec­tions.

The two different versions of WordPress (the in­de­pen­dent­ly hosted in­stal­la­tion and wordpress.com) mean there is a wide selection of WordPress domain transfer options. Since WordPress is the world’s most used CMS, de­vel­op­ers have also created a host of plugins for dealing with a domain change in every possible scenario. At IONOS you’ll always find the right Managed Hosting for WordPress package whatever your needs. In addition to the many ad­van­tages of WordPress itself, you’ll benefit from around the clock technical support so that you can fully con­cen­trate on blogging. Thanks to the range of plugins and methods at hand, there is a solution for every user and their unique set of cir­cum­stances. The easy-to-use plugins can help beginners get their projects off the ground, whereas more ex­pe­ri­enced users can opt for more complex ex­ten­sions or a manual set-up. Since the WordPress community is so enormous, users can trust that the various migration plugins will be kept up-to-date. Thus, you can rely on always having a great range of tools for easily trans­fer­ring or changing your WordPress domain.