HowTo Change Domain name for current blog in 5 steps

In simple HowTo i show you how i migrate one WordPress website from one domain to another.

I got this website: CSSBloom.com, i migrate it to new domain name CSSBloom.net and it works good.

1. First of all i create empty WordPress install at CSSBloom.net, put there simple empty WordPress blog with working mysql base.

2. Move (copy) all files from .com to .net directory. Compare if everything is ok (use Linux and diff command to compare that).

3. Export old database, open it with Notepad++ and replace all cssbloom.com with new cssbloom.net.
Save it and import to new cssbloom.net empty database. Go to cssbloom.net folder on server and point wp-cofig.php to new imported mysql base.

4. Go to .net wordpress site, log in and change:
WordPress address (URL): to .net
Blog address (URL): to .net

5. Redirect domain .com to .net

Go to $HOME/.htaccess, edit it and add:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} cssbloom.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.cssbloom.net/$1 [R]

And it works, check this out: www.CSSBloom.com & www.CSSBloom.net !

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My Notes

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SideNotes Archive

11 Responses to “HowTo Change Domain name for current blog in 5 steps”

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1 Robin (2 comments) Aug 7th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Somehow i’m just about to do this next week. Thanks for the tips.
2 Peter (233 comments) Aug 7th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

No problem, just done it today and as you see it works. Simple, fast and 100% good.

I just figure it out that you even don’t need to setup blank wordpress install in first place, just copy files, change sql base info to new imported base and you got the same WordPress version running with new domain name.

Good luck !
3 Brandon Cox (1 comments) Aug 7th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Thanks - I’ve been holding off for fear I’ll ruin my search engine rankings - cool.
4 jbj (1 comments) Aug 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Great article. I had many issues with that some time ago, too bad I didn’t found your article before!
5 Peter (233 comments) Aug 12th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

@jbl nice to hear good words

i think i will migrate my friend website to my server, it will be a big migration (the site is big) and after that i try to find some time to write another post with howto migrate wordpress site from one hosting to another
6 Lucas (2 comments) Aug 17th, 2008 at 5:59 am

This is helpful. I know someone who’s been changing domains like crazy. I’ll send this to him.
7 TheWeblogZone (3 comments) Sep 1st, 2008 at 8:02 am

I wish there’s an easier way to do this. I hope you can make your tips simpler… one that could be understood by non-techies like me.
8 Peter (233 comments) Sep 1st, 2008 at 4:31 pm

I thought it was simple, if you can ask somebody to do this for you it would be better because if something is going to break your sites will be offline.
9 web about money (1 comments) Sep 11th, 2008 at 11:42 am

Great article. Subscribe your rss!!
10 Women's Clothes (2 comments) Sep 24th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

For the .com redirect, you can always use a 301 redirect as well in the header if you’re not sure on htaccess files.