Mapping Your Domain to Work with a WordPress.com Blog
If you want to create a more professional identity for your WordPress.com blog, consider mapping your domain names to your WordPress.com address. This lets visitors reach your blog using your domain name instead of your WordPress.com address. For example, this lets visitors go to coolexample.com instead of coolexample.wordpress.com.
To point your WordPress.com blog to your domain name, you must first purchase domain mapping from WordPress.com, and then update the settings in your WordPress.com and Domain Manager.
Completing the instructions outlined in Setting Your Nameservers will cause your email hosted with us to stop working. If you want to continue to use your email with us, you must complete the Pointing Your Domain Name's MX Records to Us section.
Setting Your Nameservers
After you have purchased domain mapping from WordPress®, you need to set your domain name's nameservers to use WordPress.com nameservers.
To Set Your Nameservers
- Log in to your Account Manager.
- Next to Domains, click Launch.
- Select the domain name you want to use with your WordPress.com blog, and then from the Nameservers menu, select Set Nameservers.
- Select Custom, and then click Add Nameserver.
- Enter the WordPress nameservers: ns1.wordpress.com, ns2.wordpress.com, and ns3.wordpress.com.
- Click Add, and then click Save.
NOTE: You cannot select your blog through WordPress.com until your nameservers resolve, which takes up to 72 hours.
Selecting Your Domain Name Through WordPress.com
After you have set your domain name's nameservers to point to WordPress.com nameservers, you must select your domain through WordPress.com to complete the process.
To Select Your Domain Name Through WordPress.com
- Log in to your WordPress.com account.
- Go to the Settings tab.
- Go to the Domains tab.
- In the Add a Domain field, enter your domain name.
- Click Add domain to blog.
- Click Put blog here for the domain name you want to direct your blog to.
Pointing Your Domain Name's MX Records to Us
To use our email after pointing your domain name to WordPress.com, you must point its MX records to us. This directs all of your Web traffic to WordPress.com and emails sent to addresses at your domain name to us.
Before you can point your MX records, though, you must find out which MX records your account uses.
To Find Your MX Records
- Log in to your Account Manager.
- Click Email.
- Click Launch next to any email account.
- Go to the Domains tab, and then click Server Addresses.
Your MX records display.
Now, you need to enter these as your MX records in your WordPress.com account.
To Point Your Domain Name's MX Records to Us
- Log in to your WordPress.com account.
- In your Dashboard, from the Store section, click Domains.
- Next to your domain, in the Email/DNS column, click Edit DNS.
- In the text form at the top of the page, enter your MX records in the following format:
MX pref host.For example:MX 0 smtp.secureserver.net.
MX 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net. - Click Save DNS records.
