How to change your sites URL on a Go Daddy shared hosting plan

It’s true this may be in a tutorial somewhere already, although I will be very descriptive and try to lay it out very easily so anyone can do it, even those who are new to WP. If you are using this tutorial make sure you have not already changed the permalinks structure of your site until after you have switched changed your domain name.

Here is the breakdown. Note that this is on a SHARED hosting account with one PRIMARY domain. This will allow you to build a live version of any site on a shared hosting account with Go Daddy. Once the site is completed you can point the domain name of your choice at the directory that WP is installed into and it will use the new domain name across the entire site. All of this is done without having to change the directory or move any files. Which in turn IMO makes it the simplest way to build a site using WP on a shared hosting account.`

For example purposes I will call the primary domain which is the ROOT domain on my account:

<blockquote>www.example.com
</blockquote>
It is a good idea to make your primary domain name a domain that is never going to be used. This is because installing any files in the root directory will get messy and can get very complicated if and when you ever need to move the files. If you only plan on having one site it is still a good idea to have two domains in-case you want to use sub domains.
We will call the new domain

<blockquote>www.mynewexample.com
</blockquote>
Once you have finished building your site, here are the steps to take so you can point your domain name at the directory you have the site installed in.

Prerequisites are:

<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Have a Go Daddy shared hosting account</li>
<li>Have your primary domain setup already</li>
<li>Install WP into a directory other than your root directory and setup a username, database name and passwords.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Log in to your go daddy account</li>
<li>Click on “My Account” in the top left</li>
<li>Scroll down and click on “WEB HOSTING” and then the green launch button.</li>
<li>At the top HOVER your mouse over the “More” option and scroll down to select “HOSTED DOMAINS”</li>
<li>Open up a new tab and leave this window open we will be using it in just a moment.</li>
<li>In the new tab, go to your WP admin panel buy going to
<blockquote>www.example.com/yourdirectory/wp-admin</blockquote>
</li>
<li>Once you are at the dashboard scroll down to “SETTINGS” on the bottom left and select “GENERAL”</li>
Your WordPress Address and Site Address should be the same as the directory path you installed WP on.

<li>Go back to the Go Daddy control panel page you were just at.</li>
<li>Find the domain you want to use for your site and on the far right column click the little pencil icon.</li>
<li>Now enter the directory that your site is installed into manually or locate it using the browse button.</li>
<li>Once this is done leave this window open and go back to your WP Admin dashboard. Change both the WP address and Site address to match the domain name you used in the last steps and remember to click SAVE</li>
</ol>
VOILA now when you access your site it should be through your new domain name even though you have the files in another directory.

If you are still having issues there is one more thing you can do to troubleshoot. It involves entering your “phpmyadmin” database which is really not too difficult so do not let it scare you off.

<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>In your Go Daddy control panel click on Databases in the menu and then select MySQL.</li>
<li>Find the database that you used for this install of WP and then click the “phpmyadmin” button on the right.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
If you forgot your password and username you can go to your FTP Browser on the control panel. Open up your directory where your site is, open up the “wp-config.php” file by selecting it and then clicking the EDIT button. Now if you scroll down you will see some code that says

<blockquote>

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', '<strong>THIS IS YOUR DB NAME</strong>');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', '<strong>THIS IS YOUR USERNAME</strong>');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', '<strong>THIS IS YOUR PASSWORD</strong>');

Now you can go ahead and log in to your phpmyadmin database.

Once inside

1. On the left click on your database name it should be the very top option with a number in it.
2. Now click on wp_options
3. Now on the right find the BROWSE tab and click on it
4. Now click the pencil icon to edit the first option. It should be siteurl under option_name
5. This should be your new sites domain name if not go ahead and change it now to your new sites domain name. Scroll down and click on the Go button that is in the box that says Save and then Go back to previous page.

AND NOW YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY HAPPY!

If this write up does not fix your issue then you may have a number of things conflicting. I followed it myself on a clean install after making a few pages and installing some plugins and it worked great.

Remember if you plan on having multiple WP sites using the Multiple WP plug-in will complicate moving sites later down the road. I suggest always using a single database for every install and give every install its own directory. It keeps things simple and organized in case you ever need to move the site or access something on the database.

Remember K.I.S.S.

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

I hope this helps.

Buddy M