Comments on: How to Move WordPress to a Different Server and Web Address

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:05:30 +0000

Thanks a lot for this tutorial, very clear and easy to follow.

By: Need help migrating my Wordpress site to new server & New domain! - Bizzteams

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:12:41 +0000

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By: LynnW

LynnW — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:26:38 +0000

@figaro Yes, we do similar things to develop then make the site live. I was just thinking about the priority load order of default files, and thought perhaps there was a way to use that, say, for example, if welcome.htm (temp page or small old site) would load before index.php (from WP), then we could develop in the same directory and not have to deal with the hassle of steps when finally making the new WP site live... thanks for your response.

By: figaro

figaro — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:08:03 +0000

@LynnW: I’m glad you have found the videos useful. As to your question about leaving the old site in root while you develop WP in root also, I’m not sure of a “clean” way of doing that. If old site consisted of simply an homepage and few other pages, then it may not present such a problem, but it could get real cluttered and confusing if you had a lot of files/directories in the old site intermingled with your WP source code. Typically, what I do is create WP in a subdirectory and when it’s time to move, just create an empty folder in root called something like OLD_BACKUP to drag all the old files into…doesn’t take a great deal of time to just drag them in there. Then follow the process of moving all WP files out to root and changing the urls like I demo in the video. It is a few more steps than what you are looking for, but I’m not sure there is a cleaner way to do it.

By: LynnW

LynnW — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:25:08 +0000

Thank you again for sharing your knowledge in a complete step-by-step way. I return here everytime I run into a wordpress glitch. A new question related to this tutorial, “How to Move WordPress to a Different Server and Web Address”: I have been using your method (updated to preserve the plugins now that the databases are serialized — thanks hugely on that!) when I move a site from development to make it live.

When I create a site for a client, I usually put up a nice temporary home page (or leave the old site up when making a new one) while I develop the new site in a subdirectory. This was a great technique when I was coding html and php. With WordPress, it’s a bit more complex, partly because often I cannot just develop the site using MAMP on my harddrive, because the client needs access to add content. So, seems I have 2 choices when it’s time to go live:

Create a redirect to the subdirectory, which then makes the site appear to be in the root, but makes other things more complex, like creating and linking to subdirectories to hold large tif files for media access, for example.

What I usually do is follow your instructions above, moving the site to the root and also removing all the old htm and php and image files associated with the old site.

My question today is: would there be a better practice for this, a more elegant solution, such as changing something simple with the htaccess file, or using the natural heirarchy (priority load order) of the default files, so that I could develop the hidden wordpress site in the root directory, while the temporary or old site still shows to the public? (e.g., what could I name the .htm or .php file that I want public and still have the home.php or index.php file that WP shows working and a blink URL for me and the client while developing?

Then, making it live would be more staightforward. Possible? Thank you.

By: Daniel S.

Daniel S. — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:45:40 +0000

Thanks so much for the tutorial! It seems like the wordpress codex is written by and for people with mild autism. I guess I needed to be guided by the hand!

By: SPeed_FANat1c

SPeed_FANat1c — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:00:46 +0000

Be carefull when moving site and using dropbox (when moving from one computer to another). For me it costed 5 hours until I find out that dropbox was not finished to copy all the files, and I was alreadyt then copying to htdocs directory and of course with not all files and then very frustrated that I cannot find why site does not work after moving.

By: Vincent Astolfi

Vincent Astolfi — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:09:23 +0000

Actually, nevermind, it’s fixed, except now the wp-admin page isnt working, and some pictures and content aren’t loading

By: Vincent Astolfi

Vincent Astolfi — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:55:05 +0000

@James I'm having the same problem btw

By: Vincent Astolfi

Vincent Astolfi — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:53:29 +0000

Hi, thanks for your tutorial.

I Actually did all of things you mentioned in this video and then came here because it didn’t work for my site. I’m trying to move a site I’m working on to a new URL just to finish it, so that I can work on the site at this URL and move it back to it’s old domain. The test URL I will be working on the site from is maclabmentors.info and the origional site was orionrentals.net. The problem is, I did everything exactly like how you did it, but only the homepage works. Any ideas on why this is happening?