This a question related to trademarks (legal question). WordPress has nothing to do with such questions.
Consult an attorney/ lawyer/ or put up the question at forums related to your problem.
Good Luck!
It looks like your site is hosted at WordPress.COM — so you would need to post in the forums for those sites. These forums are for self-hosted WordPress.ORG sites only.
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/
Moderator
Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)
Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
Also consider giving this a read, it explains the differences between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
[ Moderator edit: Utterly pointless personal comment made about another productive volunteer removed. Please leave the attitude at home and not make more statements like that again. ]
@toughmudrunner/Simon – I’m by no means an expert on matters relating to domain name registration or indeed wordpress… and I am sure that there will be many more people on this forum that can provide you with the technical assistance that you are clearly asking for.
If I have read and understood your post correctly, you are not asking for legal advice (as @krishna understands it) but you require assistance regarding moving from your original domain name – http://www.toughmuddermechanics.com to another, as yet to be decided name, without actually changing the structure or content (other than name) of the site?
First things first…. Make a back up of your current wordpress installation – the following should provide a first point of call – . You can also ‘export’ your files from the wordpress admin dashboard (see tools>export).
Looking further into the Codex I came across this page – http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL
A further thought would be to contact your hosting company (did they also help with domain name registration!). The hosting companies are usually pretty helpful and knowledgable on these matters.
With regards to a re-direct… perhaps this is an opportunity to reach out to your 211 followers to engage further with them. Hopefully, you have their email addresses, if so, send an email, explain that the name of the site is changing and reference some things that you are looking to achieve in 2013 and you look forward to their continued support as you look to grow and develop your business. However, before doing this I would advise that you have the new domain registered & the site set-up, so that they have something to go to when you send out the emails.
I hope this information helps! But I do also hope that someone with much greater experience than I will also add to this post.
I also very much hope that an official moderator of wordpress (or someone who understands your question properly) will take it upon themselves to add to my comments.
Regards and goodluck
Cal
Moderator
Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)
Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
I also very much hope that an official moderator of wordpress (or someone who understands your question properly) will take it upon themselves to add to my comments.
Done, but possibly not the way you’d like.
@cal I’ve edited your reply as your personal attack on another member is not warranted and will not be tolerated. If you are not satisfied with the advice from other volunteers then feel free to just ignore it and/or take a walk to clear the air.
Walking is good and I recommend it heartedly. 😉
Regarding the matter at hand: Simon’s blog is hosted on WordPress.COM and WPYogi’s *Jan waves “Hi!” in that direction* advice was right on target. I expanded a little bit with that link but it does not appear he’s running a self-hosted WordPress software installation.
Because it’s a WordPress.COM installation if he wants to ensure that his 700 hours of work are preserved then the best way to get there is to start with the .COM support forum.
The export advice you have provided is good (thanks for that BTW) but unless or until Simon gets his own self-hosted installation there really is not much advice we should be providing as we’re not the best place to offer support for any hosted blogging service including WordPress.COM.
@cal: Also please do not try to start new topics attacking a forum member and tag them as “modlook”. As Jan as said, such behaviour will not be tolerated.
