Change your site’s primary address

Your primary site address is the domain that people will see in their browser’s address bar when visiting your site. It is the address you use to promote your website. This guide will show you how to switch your site’s primary address, including how to change it from the .wordpress.com or .wpcomstaging.com address to your own domain.

To use a domain as your site’s primary address, you will need:

• A domain registered or connected to WordPress.com.
• Any paid WordPress.com plan.

With a paid WordPress.com plan, you can set a custom domain as the primary site address. Without a paid plan, all custom domain(s) on the site will automatically redirect to your free .wordpress.com or .wpcomstaging.com site address.

Changing the primary address of the site will not negatively affect your website’s content and design. For example, it’s common to create and design a website on the .wordpress.com address and switch the primary address to your custom domain later, once the site is ready to launch. None of your progress could be lost by changing your primary address before, during, or after you work on the website.

To switch your site’s primary site address, follow these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Upgrades → Domains (if using the Default Admin interface) or Hosting → Domains (if using the WP Admin interface).

3. On the Domains Management page, you will see the “Primary site address” section at the top, along with a list of site addresses associated with your site below. The current address set as primary has a green label “Primary site address” above it.

4. In the section titled “Primary site address” select the domain you want to make primary from the “Select a domain” drop-down menu. There are a few reasons why you may not see the domain you would like to use in the drop-down menu.

5. Click the button labeled “Set as primary.”
6. Open a new tab in your browser and visit your site. Your site’s primary site address will appear in the address bar.

If you visit your new site address and your website does not immediately appear, or you see errors, you will want to make sure the domain is fully set up.

If you already have a custom domain and want to change the domain address, visit our guide on how to change a domain name.

You may wish to use the free .wordpress.com site address (or .wpcomstaging.com for plugin-enabled sites) as the website’s primary site address. This is common in situations where you move your domain to another provider but still need to access your WordPress.com site admin dashboard.

To set the free site address as the primary address, you can follow the same steps as in the previous section. You can also click the three dots button to the right of the free site address and select the “Make primary site address” option:

If you haven’t yet added a domain to your website, it will use the free site address (.wordpress.com or .wpcomstaging.com) by default. Visit Change a Site Address to learn how to edit the free site address.

Your site can have multiple custom domains pointing to the same website. For example, you can add multiple domains to cover common misspellings of your primary site address so that visitors who make a typo will still get to the right place. One of those domains will be the Primary Site Address, and all your other domains will redirect to the primary one.

Visitors can get to your site using any of the domains you add to the site, including the free or address. However, the address they see in their browser’s address bar will always be the domain you choose as the primary site address.

You can add additional domains to the same site from the site’s dashboard. Go to Upgrades → Domains (or Hosting → Domains if using WP Admin) and click the “Add a domain” button to proceed.

If you want the domain names to show different content, create a new site first. Go to https://wordpress.com/start to create a new site on your account, where you will select a plan and add your new domain. Don’t worry if you have already added the domain name to your existing site—you can transfer the domain to a new site after you’ve created it.