How to transfer every bit of my website to another url

Probably the easiest thing to do is log in to your wp dashboard.

Go to tools > export and export all your content. Save the export file somewhere safe.

Go to plugins and make a note of which ones you are using and the settings.

Go to appearance > widgets and take a screenshot or note your settings.

Log in to your hosting account via FTP and navigate to /wordpress/wp-content/themes and download the folder for theme you are using.

Now install wordpress in your root directory.
In /wp-content/themes upload the theme folder you downloaded earlier.
Go to appearance and activate it.
Install any plugins
Add any widgets.

Go to tools > import > wordpress

Import the exported file created earlier.

Follow the steps.

That should do the trick.

Hi, I have a client that requires a countdown timer page – to show users when the actual wordpress site will be launched. So I plan to redirect the site e.g mysite.com to the countdown timer e.g mysite.com/countdowntimer. This all seems straight forward.

What I fear is that when I am building the wordpress site, I will not be able to viewmy progress as the URL redirection is in effect. @rxhost, is it good practice to carry out your instructions as above. i.e Export all content, which I can then upload to my nominated url (mysite.com)? Hope this makes sense.

Is there a standard practice for this? Surely someone else has been in my situation before?

Many thanks,

Paul.

Hi Paul,

You have a couple of options here.

1) You may redirect, but how you redirect will make some difference.

If you’re going the redirection route, I highly recommend that you create an index.html file with a temporary redirect.

Look at the meta refresh redirection method.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection

You will be able to access your site, but since version 3 of WordPress trying to access the homepage won’t work. i.e. yourdomain.com/index.php won’t load anything.

yourdomain.com will redirect as you want

yourdomain.com/page-name-here will show you that page site you are working on. (please make sure settings permalinks you have a custom structure of /%postname%/ )

Solution number 2: (this may be easier but involves more work)

Redirect the site as mentioned above.

Install wordpress somewhere else on your server or even locally on your pc/mac. Develop the site theme and content as you want it on this second wordpress. Once you’re done export content and save theme files etc as outlined in my last post and then transfer all to the main WP site.

Hope that helps ??

Chirag

Hi, your first option looks to be of a better method. I gave option (2) a test run and you’re right, there is a bit more work to do. All was imported ok though if I have made changes with psd’s and styling, these changes do not come across, I need to upload again.

Your Option 1: So just to be clear, if I place an index.html file in the root of the directory, with the Refresh Meta tag, this will create the redirect? Is this index.html file in the same folder as index.php and the rest of the WordPress content? Then I can remove the index.html file when necessary? Are you saying index.html has preference over indx.php? Sorry for the elaborate questions. Just looking for a smooth transition when crossing over.

Also if I cannot show the client the home page until launch, that is not a good plan

Thanks again.

Option 2 works. To make sure the changes you make to the layout etc are carried over you need to download the folder for your theme from your “development” wordpress.

So the folder in /wp-content/themes/YOUR-EDITED-THEME

Where YOUR-EDITED-THEME is the name of the theme you are working on.

Take that folder and upload to the main blog.

Option two is the ideal solution as you can show your client the site on your local machine or another address on their domain e.g. yourdomain.com/development

As for option 1.

if you place index.html in the root folder of your wordpress install then it *should* take preference over index.php. This varies depending on server set up and if it doesn’t work you’ll want to talk to your host. They should help you determine the order of preference for index files.

Yes, you can simply delete or rename the index.html file when you’re ready to launch.

Depending on how you’re going to set up your site i.e. blog on the homepage or blog on another page e.g. /blog then you *may* be able to show your client the homepage.

If the homepage is a static page you can develop it at yourdomain.com/home and then for example make it the actual homepage when you go live by editing settings > reading > and selecting home as the static page you want as homepage.

Hope that makes sense.

I gave the option 2 a go. There were a couple of touch ups i needed to carry out though all in all it seems to be the way to go.

Thanks a bunch.

Paul.