Wordpress and Blogger both offer custom domains
Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Nic on 10-09-2007
Tagged Under : Blogger, custom domains, Wordpress
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I hate it when people talk about things that they don’t know about.
I was reading a post wherein a commenter on the post was upset that the post referred to wordpress.com and blogspot.com blogs as free, easy and customizable. The commenter argued that Blogger and Wordpress don’t offer custom domains. They definitely do offer custom domains such as .com, .net, .info, .biz and others, almost anyone domain you so choose really.
The only cost you will incur is purchasing the domain of your choice (around R100 or less) and redirect your DNS (which only some hosts charge for). That’s it. Bob’s your Uncle, Fanny’s your Aunt. Done and dusted.
Strangely enough if that person had actually read this blog and simply done a search they would have found that I have posted on this topic before. My post was Blogger specific as I was using blogger back then.
Let’s review a quote from that blog post:
You need to purchase your domain and make sure that it’s working before you can select it as your new domain on blogger. Once these steps have been completed your old url will point to your new url so there wont be any links lost or time wasted in the past.
It’s as easy as that.
Wordpress is much the same as far as I know (which admittedly isn’t too far). If you have a wordpress.com blog already all you have to do is enter your admin panel and enter a domain you have already registered and Wordpress will redirect all your links to that domain. Simple.
From the Wordpress website:
It’s here: you can now use your own custom domain with your WordPress.com blog. For example, if your blog was currently at example.wordpress.com you could buy example.com from us and we would automatically move your blog over and redirect all your links and readers to the new domain.
If you don’t have a domain registered you can use Worpress to register your desired domain for a measly $15/year. That is cheap. In fact that is under R400 a year to have a great looking, functional and customised website.
Does that include having your own Adsense on there, by any chance?
This is pretty much what I did in order to get my .com domain set up as it is. It worked beautifully for me and I used mydomain.com
It was not as easy to arrange on a .co.za as i don’t think the American sites would be able to register in SA. (which is why I fell for the R274,00 offer foolishly thinking that if I paid that exorbitant fee - in comparison to the .com give-away price - I would be all set) Fools step in etc…
Oh I was actually meaning to simply say that Adsense is easy to set up and on Blogger and costs nothing extra. You get paid for clicks so it’s hopefully an income-GENERATOR rather than an added expense.
Am I right on that anyone?
Ok, just so I don’t misunderstand anything. If I pay WP $15 per year, they register my own domain for me, which I can redirect to my WP blog (myblog.wordpress.org) and I can have my own Adsense on that WP blog at the subdomain site?
That sounds amazing. I’m on a shared server with my own domain, righ now, and I pay about $30 a year. The thing is I have to avoid getting listed on reddit and digg. The last time that happened my account was suspended due to that famed digg-effect.
And right now I just can’t afford a dedicated server. But if I understand your words correctly, then I may have just found a cheap solution!
click - That’s what I’m saying. You can pretty much pay the $15 dollars and carry on with life as you know it. Adsense is a seperate issue but in theory you should have absolutely no issue with placing adsense ads on a wordpress hosted blog. You make money, enough hopefully to pay for the price of registering the domain with WP!
Jeanne - Ye, it took me a bit of time to realise that I could have my own domain. I don’t do that any more, I have my own WP install with my .com and hosting I decided to pay for for my various blogs.
It just really comes down to a personal choice, what you can afford and what you are comfortable with i suppose.
I always forget that there are millions of people out there who are fortunate to be not as nerdy/geeky as me and do need easy and understandable advice from guys like Nic on how to do things related to buying a domain and selecting a host for their site/blog.
Over time I have bought a stack of domains and used 4 hosting sites.
The prices for domains have decreased a lot since I first used the WWW back in ‘95. These days the competition from resellers means we buyers can get good deals for .com, .net, .org TLDs (Top Level Domains). The prices .co.uk and .co.za fluctuate but are cheaper than they were this time 2005.
I look for a domain reseller who has a secure precense in the telcoms industry behind it and who also offers cheap hosting with free domain.
Currently iScatterlings is hosted by planetdomain in Australia (being the internet it makes no difference which country hosts your site)who do cheap offers. The GBP FX rate works in my favour too and makes for very cheap spend.
You can go to http://planetdomain.com and buy a cheap domain and ask Circle in CT to host it. This might mean you need to change DNS records which can be a niggle.
But I also use Circle (http://www.circle.co.za/) in Cape Town. Have had nothing but great service from David Venter. He holds my iScatterlings.co.za domain with mail and domain forwarding to iScatterlings.com
Now back to Wordpress. Buy a domain at Circle and use Wordpress if you decide to use Circle’s cheapest packae. WP is the best. Just look at the two letter acronym……….WP……jislaaik mense it has to be brilliant!
Thanks Robert, This is great advice for anyone who is trying to get to grips with their own domains. I also sometimes forget about the non-geeks!!
Clearly though, there is a market for this sort of blog post as people are always looking to acquire knowledge!
Your blog posting referred to me, since I made the comment you attack. You claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Let’s see about that.
If you wish to use a custom domain with either WordPress or Blogger you need to PAY for that.
That was my point. Custom domains are not a FREE service.
You need to pay to register the domain and you need to pay to host it. A co.za domain can only be registered if DNS entries pre-exist for it. That requires you to pay for a hosting account.
Other domains may not need to be hosted.
In the context, we were talking specifically about co.za domains.
Hosters generally do not agree to create accounts on their servers for domains, and forward the DNS and email for free. There will be a fee associated with that.
Bottom line is that in the context of the discussion, neither free offering of either WordPress or Blogger give you a custom domain name for your blog.
I’m not impressed with you, Haralambous. You seem to enjoy bad mouthing others. You purposefully wrote this blog article in a scathing manner, without even stopping to consider that perhaps you hadn’t fully understood what I was saying, nor did you bother to contact me privately to clarify.
Let’s face it, you’re not out here to befriend people, are you? You’re out to pick fights, cause trouble, and guess what? You’re getting trouble.
Hi Richard, Thanks for the comment. I’m not trying to pick fight at all.
I appreciate your comments as they are well structured (for the most part) and almost completely rational (for the most part).
So, I hope you visit my blog again, and I’ll keep reading the message board on your blog!