Making the decision to move my blog from http://www.courseladder.com to http://www.golfballdriver.com was a big one, and a good one, and it taught me a lot about learning how to relocate your Wordpress blog to a new domain name under the same hosting provider. Course Ladder suited me for a while, but from an SEO standpoint it was not a good domain name for me to stick with over a long term and I am glad for the change.
Golf Ball Driver is better than Course Ladder because…
- “Golf” in the domain name
- All domain words are highly relevant
- Direct golf product tie in
- It makes sense. What am I? A golf ball driver!
- The double entendre between the products and the persona.
What You Need to Do:
The first thing that you want to do is to create a new add on domain for the new domain name.
The next step in the process is to copy the entire contents of the old domain folder, which includes your entire Wordpress blog, into the brand new domain folder within the same hosting area.
Next, there are a couple of SQL statements that you need to run:
* First, to update your WordPress options with the new location of your blog, the following SQL command needs to be put in:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';
Next, you are going to need to fix the URLs of your posts and pages on WordPress. The URL values are stored as absolute URLs rather than as relative URLs, so you need to use the following SQL query to change them.
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.old-domain.com','http://www.new-domain.com');
If you have linked internally at any point within your blog posts or your pages using absolute URLs, then this links are going to be pointing to the wrong locations after you change the location of your blog. You need to use the following SQL commands in order to fix all of the internal linking in all of your Wordpress posts and pages.
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com');
Once you have put all of these SQL queries into action, the next step is to browse through as much of your WordPress blog as you can in order to make sure that everything is in good working order. You are also going to need to login to your WP Administration section because the authentication cookie will become invalid when you change domains.
Now you can delete the old folder contents so that your blog is not appearing in two different places.
In order to 301 redirect all old links from the old domain to the new domain, place a single file .htaccess into the now empty folder. You want to be sure to 301 redirect else you will permanently lose any hard earned links you have developed. Here is what the file should contain:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.old-domain.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.old-domain.com
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ "http://www.new-domain.com/$1" [R=301,L]
Finally, update your Wordpress blog to have the new blog name in your title.
The process is relatively simple once you have a feel for what needs to be accomplished. Above all else, it is vital that you avoid upsetting your linking structure in the process. Make sure that all of your links are still valid and working after you make the big move, and your blog should be just fine, and more importantly, better off with an improved domain name.
Originally posted 2009-02-05 09:45:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Related Posts -
Increase Traffic to Blog, pt1 This is part one in a three part series dedicated to increasing traffic to your blog in a number of different ways. Now that you have your blog set up and you are beginning to post useful information in its pages, the next step is to start attracting useful readers...... -
Wordpress Backup Wordpress Backup is an essential plugin for all Wordpress blog administrators by the Blog Traffic Exchange. It performs regular backups of your upload (images) current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don't get caught without a recent backup of...... -
Installing a WordPress Blog If you want to install WordPress on your own server, the first step is to download the necessary files from the website at WordPress.org download. Next, you will use an FTP program to upload the files to your host site. If you use Cpanel, you can use Fantastico in order...... -
Advantages of Using Wordpress to Publish a Newspaper Blog If you want to have a blog or website that's in newspaper format, Wordpress is the ideal medium. There are many other services you could use, but because Wordpress is so user friendly it's easy to set up your blog to look like a newspaper (or a website, or whatever...... -
Tips for Improving Blog Visitors All bloggers are looking for ways that they can improve the popularity of their blog, in order to increase the number of blog visitors. They work hard to make their blogs popular, and spend most of their spend time doing this. The longer that you blog, the more little tips......
Related Websites -
Make Blogging Work for Your Business pt 2 Are you ready to make blogging work for your business? If you already know the benefits associated with corporate blogging, then the next step is to put these concepts to work by creating your own corporate blog and sharing your company with the world. This is part 2 in a...... -
Start Blogging #1 [ad#adstext1] I can show you how to make money online!!! Before we can get started , YOU have to be online! Today I will show you how to build your first blog, which is surprisingly easy! Make sure you take action as you read through my post or you will...... - Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog? by: Len Hutton So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is......
-
Contemporary Romance by Shelley Munro, guest blogger Thanks so much for having me to visit today. My name is Shelley Munro, and I write both contemporary and paranormal romance for Ellora’s Cave and Samhain Publishing. I come wearing my contemporary author hat today. Like many other readers and authors, some of...... -
Weight Loss Tips and Blogs Needed I need some help. Any one with any weight loss tips and blogs that can help me shed some extra weight and adjust to my new lifestyle are encouraged to share them. I am looking for tips and tricks that will assist me in losing some extra fat, gain more......
- Lamp Posts Outdoor Lighting Yard, Garden Outdoor Living
- Discount Golf Pro Shop
- Splash Pages Original Comic Art Comics Collectibles
- Cuff Links Original Items Current Militaria 2001-Now Militaria Collectibles
Categories:
Blog Tips, Blogging, Content Ideas, Domain/Host, Platform, SEO, WordPress
Tags:
9 comments ↓
What is the reason for changing the folder where the contents resides? Wouldn’t this work without doing that?
I changed folders so that I could have a clean ht access file in the old directory. To me this made for a cleaner and more maintainable final product.
For some reason that didn’t work for me. I actually ended up using two folders. I had the old site in the old folder and then set the new site in a new folder. I then used a 301 to redirect in the .htaccess from the old site to the new site. The following command will preserve the path so if you type oldsite.com/dir/file.ext it will 301 redirect to newsite.com/dir/file.ext.
RedirectMatch 301 ^/?(.*)$ http://newsite.com/$1
Hello! I just moved my blog following the steps listed in your post. That was easy! Thanks.
However, I don’t understand this part:
“You are also going to need to login to your WP Administration section because the authentication cookie will become invalid when you change domains.”
What should I do exactly? where are my authentification cookie in my WP Admin section?
Thanks lot!
@Patrice
I was saying in a very wordy way. That wordpress was going to ask for you user/pass to gain access to the admin section.
Glad it helped you!
Thank’s for your information.
hey… this is great! but i do have 1 question:
where do i “run SQL queries” from?
i was looking around in cpanel, and couldn’t find where i could add queries, only new databases.
thanks a bunch
- will
Thanks for directing me to this post Kevin
this was really helpful
I was just trying to figure a way to do this, glad I found this post.
Leave a Comment