Moving Wordpress Installation to Another Location

Written on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | Filed under: Wordpress

Wordpress is a popular blog.  I did not know how much I would fall in love with developing on this platform.

For my installation, I have it hosted on Bluehost.  Since I installed it in 2007, I was not aware of its capabilities at the time.  I had it in directories nested two levels deep and also had it pointing to a different subdomain, http://blog.designrjc.com.  This is not ideal for SEO and it kept organization chaotic.

I had previously moved a Wordpress installation to a different location on the server so I have had experience, but that one was a bit more straight forward.

There are several methods to move or migrate your Wordpress to different locations on your server but I believe this to be the easiest implementation.

  1. Backup your Wordpress installation by downloading the entire contents via FTP as well as backing up your database.  Just in case something goes wrong and you need to do a re-install.
  2. Create a new folder at the location of the directory where you want it to be in.
  3. Log into your Wordpress website
  4. Go to Adminstration -> Settings -> General panel.
  5. Change the WordPress address (URI): to the new location path of where all your main core files will end up at.
  6. Change the Blog address (URI): pointing to where the new location is at.  In most cases, this will match the previous box.
  7. Move all your files to the new directory into the folder you just created.
  8. Now test to see if you have successfully moved and migrated your Wordpress to the new location.

There are several things to note after you migrate.

  1. If you were using Permalinks you will need to log into your Dashboard and update the Permalink structure.
  2. Images may be missing from posts because they are pointing to the old path.
    • Old Path – http://yourdomain.com/wordpress/blog/wp-content/uploads/
    • New Path – http://yourdomain.com/newwordpress/wp-content/uploads/

Good luck on moving your Wordpress installation to a more ideal location that is easier for you to keep organized as well as being SEO friendly.

Here are some additional resources and guides to help you with this:

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