Content marketing truly is king when it comes to boosting your presence and authority online. By setting up a WordPress blog on your domain, you'll be able to create long-form content such as blogs and guides quickly and easily, using the world's most popular CMS.
What's more, you won't need to change your domain name, and it doesn't matter if your current website doesn't support a blog. We've put all the steps you need to take below into an easy to read guide.
How to connect a domain to a WordPress site
Domain connection is the process of mapping your main domain to WordPress so that you can keep your concise, original domain name.
- You continue to manage the domain name renewal through the provider you originally purchased from, aka your domain registrar.
- Your domain will use specific DNS records to display the website you built on WordPress.com.
- If you have an existing custom email service through your domain registrar or another company, you’ll need to set up additional DNS records on WordPress.com to continue using that email service.
- To set up a domain connection, you’ll need to use a paid WordPress.com plan.
Connecting your domain step-by-step
- Once you’ve logged on to WordPress, go to Upgrades.
- Click ‘Add a domain’ on the top right of the screen and select ‘Use a domain I own’ from the drop down menu.
3. Copy and paste the domain name you own and click the ‘Next’ button.
4.On the next screen you’ll be given two options, choose the ‘Select’ button next to connect your domain.
5. Once the page has loaded, click the ‘Start setup’ button to start the process of changing your domain's name servers. We’ll go through the step by step instructions for this in the next section of this guide.
How to change your domain's name servers
There are two options for updating your name servers to point to your WordPress.com site, the first is doing it yourself and the second is contacting your domain registrar to do it for you.
Option 1: update name servers yourself
To do it yourself, simply log in to your account at your domain registrar and replace the current domain name server (DNS) addresses with the name servers for WordPress.com.
These are:
ns1.wordpress.com
ns2.wordpress.com
ns3.wordpress.com
Before you replace the current DNS, remember to remove the old name servers.
Option 2: contact your domain registrar
If you’re struggling to do it yourself, you can always contact the support department at your domain registrar to make the DNS changes to help you make them. Here’s a sample email you can use to send to your registrar support team:
“I’d like to use my domain with a WordPress.com site. In order to do that, I need to point my domain’s name server to the following:
ns1.wordpress.com
ns2.wordpress.com
ns3.wordpress.com
It’s worth noting that once you’ve changed your domain’s name server, it can take up to 72 hours before the DNS is fully updated across global servers and internet server providers. If it still hasn’t updated after this time period, try clearing your browser’s cache.
How to set up your connected domain as the primary site address
In order to set up your connected domain as the primary site address, go to ‘Upgrades’ on your WordPress, and you can see which domain is currently set as primary.
Simply click on the ellipsis (three dots) next to the domain you want to make primary, and then select ‘Make primary site address’.
What are the benefits of hosting a WordPress Blog on your own domain?
There are some clear advantages that should influence your final decision on whether to use a free blog site or self hosting, these boil down to three factors: professionalism, discoverability and control.
Professionalism
Using a free blog site on WordPress that’s not housed on your domain will mean that the URL will have WordPress in it. If looking professional is important to you, hosting the blog on your own domain may be the best move as the URL will show up like yourcompanyname(dot)com/blog. A little more suave, don’t you think?
Discoverability
Being discoverable online is essential for a successful online business, and search engine optimisation (SEO) is an essential ingredient for this. Hosting a blog on your domain is a great way to improve your SEO as all the new blog posts that you add will be indexed by the search engines for that single domain and credited to the parent website, making it rank well.
Control
On a free blog site, you don’t have full control over the site, the underlying company (like WordPress) is the real owner. Although your content is identified with you, if you want to move to another free platform later down the line, or even to your own domain, you risk losing your readers and valuable SEO ranking.
On the other hand, when you own your own blog hosting account, it doesn’t matter if you switch web designers, web hosting providers, or make any other changes to your online business, you’ll always have full control over your content. That means you won’t lose your established Google rankings or traffic because you’ll always keep the website and domain name.
Now you know how to host a WordPress Blog on your domain, and all the benefits that come with it, what are you waiting for?
Take a look through our wide selection of domain names, as well as our hosting plans, there’s bound to be something that works for you. If you’re on the hunt for some extra guidance, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our sales team.
