How to change WordPress domain name using phpMyAdmin

  • How to change WordPress domain name using phpMyAdmin
    (Used for account hosted at GoDaddy.com)

    #1 Hosting Account => backup site and change domain name

    Backup site
    1. Go to My Account => Hosting => Launch => Databases => MySQL
    2. Click pencil icon (Edit) under Action => Select Backup => click OK
    (May take up to 2 hrs)
    3. Use an FTP program (Ex: Filezilla) to copy your completed database backup and all files off-site (to your PC)

    Change domain name – Domain Name System (DNS)
    1. Go to My Account => Hosting => Settings (top menu) => Change Domain Name
    (Edit Primary Domain box appears)
    2. Enter new domain name ONLY (not entire URL address) Ex:newdomain.com
    (takes up to 24 hrs; I did this at 9 PM; DNS was changed by 8:30 AM in the morning)

    #2 phpMyAdmin => change the URL directly in the database

    Log in to your Account Manager
    1. From the Products section, click Web Hosting
    2. Next to the hosting account you want to use, click Launch
    3. In the Databases section of the Hosting Control Center, click MySQL
    4. Next to the WordPress database, click Manage via phpMyAdmin
    5. Enter the username and password for your database
    6. In the left hand column, click ‘+’ beside your database name
    7. Click ‘wp-options’
    8. Click on the ‘Browse’ icon on the left in the top menu
    9. Find siteurl in the ‘option_name’ column, click the Pencil (Edit) icon and change ‘option_value’ from https://www.OLDdomain.com to https://www.NEWdomain.com

    where https://www.NEWdomain.com is your site’s new address and https://www.OLDdomain.com is your site’s old address.

    10. Increment Page number to ‘2’, find home in the ‘option_name’ column and repeat step 9 to change ‘option_value’ from your site’s old address to site’s new address

    To verify all occurrences of your site’s old address were changed to site’s new address
    1. On the phpMyAdmin page, in the Left column, click the SQL icon in the middle
    2. Enter the following in the text box that appears: (remember the quotes ‘http… ‘)

    UPDATE wp_options
    SET option_value = ‘https://www.NEWdomain.com’
    WHERE option_value = ‘https://www.OLDdomain.com’

    where https://www.NEWdomain.com is your site’s new address and https://www.OLDdomain.com is your site’s old address.

    3. Click Go. (Check information window to see if any other occurrences were changed)

    If any graphics / other files do not appear on your site after the above changes:
    1. Edit the pages of your WordPress site in HTML view
    2. Enter ‘Ctrl + F’, then old site URL Ex: https://www.OLDdomain.com),
    to Find any occurrences of old site URL
    3. Replace any old site URLs with the new URL
    (Ex: https://www.NEWdomain.com)

    Note: After researching the WordPress forums, and other sources that
    listed options for changing a domain name or URL, I did not
    find one that convinced me that there is one method that works
    in all cases.

    This is what worked for me. It was relatively simple and did not
    take much time to complete. I wanted to share it with others,
    in the hope that I can save someone else the time I spent
    researching how to change a WordPress domain name.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    After researching the WordPress forums, and other sources that listed options for changing a domain name or URL, I did not find one that convinced me that there is one method that works in all cases.

    This method works in all cases, it just lacks the specifics on how to change your hosting account’s primary domain and how to get to phpMyAdmin since that varies depending on your hosting provider.

    Daniel Doezema offers a script that helps migrating the website to a new domain: https://dan.doezema.com/2010/04/wordpress-domain-change/

    I’ve added MU support to that script, which is available for download here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1205235/wp-change-domain.php
    For MU, after you run the script you must also update your wp-config.php and change the constant DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE to the new domain.

    NOTICE: My MU version wasn’t tested a lot, so BACKUP ALL YOU DATA before running it.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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