Overview
My girlfriend loves food. Almost in an obsessive way. She loves food so much that whenever we go to a nice place to eat, she takes a fancy picture of every dish and then does a mass upload to Facebook. Some of her friends were saying that she could probably make a pretty good food blog, and being the loving boyfriend that I am, I set up a new domain and managed WordPress account for her: jennylovesfood.com.
Of course, it turns out she isn’t interested in that at all. Oh well, at least I tried! Instead of having the domain and managed wordpress in a separate account for her though, I decided to consolidate the accounts into my own account. This way I can manage everything from one place, if she ever decides to start working on her blog it won’t be an issue, and I won’t have to pay any renewal fees.
Objectives:
- Transfer her domain from her account to my account
- Point the DNS for jennylovesfood.com to a dedicated space on my web host
- Delete her managed wordpress and install a new one on my space that she can use whenever she wants
Steps
Step 1: Transferring the Domain
Suprisingly, Godaddy made this very easy! You do need to start off at the new registrar, but it takes less than 30 minutes to complete all the steps. After completing the steps, you do have to wait a couple days for the actual transfer to complete.
- Advise your administrative contact that you are transferring the domain name, and verify that your administrative contact information is valid.
- If applicable, cancel your Protected Registration or DBP Private Registration.
- Unlock your domain name.
- Check with your new registrar to see if you need an authorization code. In my case, I did.
- Initiate the domain name transfer at your new registrar.
- Authorize the transfer in your account with the new registrar.
- The registry notifies us, and then we email you instructions to complete the transfer. If you do not accept or deny the transfer request in your account with us within five days, we automatically complete the transfer.
- The registry notifies your new registrar of the transfer’s acceptance or rejection.
- We email you confirmation when the transfer completes. A transfer between registrars takes five to seven days to complete after you authorize it.
Source: https://www.godaddy.com/help/transferring-domain-names-to-another-registrar-3560
Step 2: Set up web forwarding with the current web host
Once the domain is transferred, I have to make sure that my web host is able to forward the domain connections to my web space. This can be done at the configuration settings of the web host. Once you set up the domain pointers, you will be provided with some name servers. You’ll need these name servers for the next step.
Source: http://www.networksolutions.com/support/how-to-set-up-domain-pointers/
Step 3: Update the nameservers of the domain at the registrar
Once the webhost is ready to forward the domain connections, you have to give the name servers to the registrar so that the web host can begin managing the DNS of the domain. This will allow the domain to be used to connect to wherever you pointed it. In the case of Namecheap, you have to use the feature Transfer DNS to Webhost.
Conclusion
That’s it! Once all of that is set up, the domain will have been transferred to a new account, and connections will be managed by the new web host. I’ve already installed a new blog on my on filespace that my girlfriend can use, only this time everything is managed under my own account and we’re not paying GoDaddy for a service we aren’t using.