It’s a good question. You will need to keep the domain you have registered at Network Solutions, unless you transfer ownership of the domain from Network Solutions to Wordpress. Personally, I’d rather not transfer the domain to the blog host.
As far as activating your site, what domain name settings (DNS records or nameservers) did Wordpress ask you to change? A week is long enough that I don’t think you made the change they wanted.
Well, here is where I’m going to be a goober. I have not transferred anything, I setup a new domain (I think) with WordPress. Here is the confirmation email I received from WordPress:
Congratulations! Your domain name is ready.
Visit my domain
You already have [name].com set as your primary domain, so you’re all set! Your visitors can now access your site just by going directly to your domain name.
Next up? Send emails from your domain and level up your brand presence with your free 3-month trial of Professional Email. Click here to get started.
When I click on “Visit my domain” I’m taken to the login page:
WordPress.com [name].com where [name] is the name I used when creating the WordPress site. I did not transfer any settings from Network Solutions. As you can see my draft posts (which I copied from SP and pasted as new drafts in WP) show up.
When you visit that domain name, you go to either a Coming Soon message or a login request, but the domain name is successfully pointing traffic to Wordpress
You also have another domain that you registered with Network Solutions that you were using with Squarespace.com
When you visit that domain name, you go to either a Coming Soon message or a login request, but the domain name is successfully pointing traffic to Wordpress
Per below, this is now corrected. I still needed to “launch” the site.
You also have another domain that you registered with Network Solutions that you were using with Squarespace.com
Yes and it is not identical to what I now have with WP. The NS domain was used only with the SP site.
Nice! Your understanding seems right to me as well. Congratulations on launching the new site!
Edit: just to double-check, you aren’t using any email addresses/receiving email with the old Network Solutions domain? It was only being used to point to the Squarespace site?
The only thing I have is the ability for readers to subscribe to receive new post updates. I’m not sure how to replicate that on WP but I’ll see what I can figure out.
Thanks for your kind help on this! You and many others are always generous with your time and expertise. You and others like you are what make this forum such a great place! I have been helped tremendously!
Wouldn’t you want to keep the old domain (at NS) for a while and just redirect that to the new WP site so people are not confused and you don’t lose traffic going to the old site?
Note - if I’m reading this correctly and you registered a domain through WordPress.com, you do NOT want to leave that domain registered through them.
Had a client go to move their site away from WordPress, and because they did things in the wrong order they completely lost access to their domain. WordPress.com refused to let them admin their domain anymore after they’d cancelled, and refused to answer their emails the day they cancelled their paid WordPress plan, even though the domain had a ton of time left on it. And the registrar for which WordPress was a reseller refused to help because WordPress owned the client relationship.
You’ll want to get that domain name to a real domain registrar at some point after the waiting period expires (60 days, I think?). Leave it pointed to WordPress.com for the hosting, but get the domain registered somewhere legit.
I have used Hover.com for my domain registration needs for years and have never had any issues. Rock solid. They don’t bother you unless things need to be updated or renewed. Agree with all other recommendations on this string to keep your domains registered at a dedicated registrar. Avoid registering domains through a host or any other similar service.
As a fellow loyal Hover user, the single most annoying thing about Hover is that they promise to answer the phone immediately when you call - and they semi-routinely don’t. You get put on hold with these “we’re sorry for breaking our promise” messages. But net hold time isn’t any worse than anybody else, and when you get through they actually help you out.
