How To Change A WordPress Domain Name

Can I Change My WordPress Domain

Domains change. It doesnt mean your WordPress site should have the same domain name for its whole lifecycle.

The process is straightforward if you have already bought another domain from your web host. It requires some technical knowledge, but following our guide, youll have no problems changing your domain name on your WordPress site.

Migrating From WordPresscom To A New Host

There are many good reasons to transfer your website from a wordpress.com server to a new provider. Often, users find wordpress.com insufficient as its primarily geared towards private bloggers, CMS beginners, and users wanting to operate a simple website with as little effort as possible.

Operating a website via wordpress.com has some disadvantages that can be avoided by using an independently hosted WordPress installation. Users that want an independent domain and more storage space, for example, could find themselves confronted with high costs when using wordpress.com. The considerable lack of variety in plugins and themes presents another serious shortcoming. In addition, you have no FTP access to your website files. Therefore, the wordpress.com CMS often fails to meet the requirements of more advanced users.

Scenario : Adding Security With The Help Of An Https Domain

Using HTTPS helps make your site more secure and can even give you a rankings boost in Google.

To move your site from HTTP to HTTPS, youll first need to install an SSL certificate. Most hosts offer free SSL certificates and make it easy to use them.

Then, youll need to change your sites URL to use the new HTTPS version.

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Changing Your WordPress Domain Name

If you want to change your WordPress® site’s domain name, you can use your WordPress control panel. However, you must also move your WordPress site’s files to the proper location and make sure your new domain name’s DNS is set correctly.

Warning:

This article makes the following assumptions:

• You are using the latest version of WordPress. For more information, see .
• You are using the same hosting account for your new WordPress site.
• Your DNS is set up. For more information, see .

Note: WordPress installations managed through Value Applications can no longer be managed using Value Applications once you complete this process.

Warning:

You need to update your domain name in the WordPress control panel and the Hosting Control Panel.

To Change the WordPress Domain Name for the Primary Domain

When working with subdomains you need to make updates in the WordPress control panel and the Hosting Control Panel.

To Change Your WordPress Domain Name to a Subdomain

How To Change WordPress Url In All Scenarios

Important: This is a big change, so wed highly encourage you to back up your site before implementing any of these methods. That way, youll always have a working copy in case something goes wrong.

After examining the reason you may want to change your WordPress URL, now its time to walk through the process of doing so. Luckily, there are a handful of methods to get the job done.

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How To Change Your WordPress Domain

Changing domains can seem like quite a daunting task at first, but it doesnt have to be. Typically this involves routing traffic to go from your old domain to your new domain . One of many peoples biggest and valid concerns is how to maintain SEO benefits throughout the entire process, as not to harm your business.

We see a lot of these types of migrations at Kinsta and so weve put together this in-depth guide below with everything you need to know on how to safely change WordPress domains, without destroying all the hard work youve done.

Reasons For A New Domain Name

There are many legitimate reasons for a new domain. Many projects will have to go under a new name and that means a new site address to match. Two of the most common scenarios are:

Rebranding: You can rebuild your companys image from the ground up and a new domain name will broadcast your improved look to the world.

Youve probably visited the old domain name called twttr, but everybody has accessed Twitter. The successful rebranding of prominent domains like this shows that change can be good.

Domain Extension Change: In some cases, your project may be running on a subdomain like mywebsite.wordpress.com or you may be using an extension like .mobi or .shop. These site addresses might not be resonating well with your audience.

Swapping to a different extension or new site address URL can breathe new life into your WordPress domain and make it even easier to reach a wider audience.

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Before We Get Started

Its important to know that:

This guide is not for moving a WordPress site to a new web host. The process for that is different. Ill show you how to do that in a separate tutorial

Also. When you change your domain name it will temporarily affect your SEO rankings.

This is normal and to be expected!

It takes time for Google to adjust to the domain change, during which time, chances are, you will likely get less search traffic for a short time.

But dont worry

Domain Name Site Url And Site Address: Whats The Difference

Often times, people use domain name, site URL, and address interchangeably. In fact, if you noticed, in the introductory part of this article, we interchanged the terms at different points.

Does it mean the three terms all mean the same thing? Not exactly.

A domain is basically the address where your website lives on the internet. Now, your website may have several pages, posts, and files, it can only have one domain name.

Think of your office address, for instance. The building might have different floors and rooms with unique IDs , it can only have one address .

A URL, on the other hand, is the address/path to a specific page, post, or file on the internet. With the office example we used above, its more like the address to a particular room in the office building.

For instance, take a look at this post on our blog: In this post, we explained how to perform a WordPress domain transfer from HTTP to HTTPS, by installing an SSL certificate.

The URL to this post can be seen highlighted at the very top of the page, and it reads:

If you copy this link to your web browser, you will specifically be taken to this post. Not the home page of the site or another page, but the post.

Lastly, the site address is a generic name used to either refer to the domain name of a website, or a URL within the site.

With that said, lets now see some of the techniques you can use for changing your domain name.

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An Important Final Step: Handling Old Links And Urls

Youve changed your WordPress URL for the future, but what about the old page URLs and links in your articles? Chances are youll stumble upon broken links after this process, so its important to resolve this issue.

This applies no matter which method you use from above.

To fix your existing links after changing your WordPress site URL, you can use the free Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin.

Important: Make sure to back up your website before you use the plugin. Because youll be changing content in your sites database, you might accidentally break something. So, if you havent already, get that recent backup ready before you continue.How to back up WordPress with a free plugin

Once you install and activate the plugin, go to Tools Update URLs.

Fill in the one field with your old URL, then type in the new URL in the other field. Check off which URL instances you would like to change. This would most likely include URLs in page content and most of the other checkboxes.

Click on the Update URLs Now button to finish the process.

You can then uninstall the Velvet Blues plugin.

Once Your Domain Is Moved Over You Can Map It To Your Siteto Do This

1. Open Account > Custom Domain2. Copy the IP address outlined. Ours is: 104.197.175.186

In Google How to set A record

In the Weeknight Website:

1. Enter your Domain and click âSet Custom Domainâ

Normally you see the changes within minutes, but it may take up to a few hours for your new records to take effect.

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Optional Move Users To Sub

If you have a lot of users and are only moving a subset of those users, it can be helpful both from an organizational perspective as well as from a security perspective to move the users to a sub-organization. Note that this does not have a direct effect on the users until you make a global change to that sub-organization the names of the organizations dont actually matter, but Ive named them by their domain name for simplicity.

To add a new organization , go to the Users section from the Admin Console. On the left, there should be a Filters sidebar (click on the small filter icon if you dont see it.

Hover over your main organization and click the three dots on the right-hand size, then click Add sub organization. I named the organization example-two.com, after the secondary domain Ive added to the Source account.

Changing The Domain Name That Points To Your WordPress Site

The first step is to get your new domain name pointing to your WordPress site.

This is easier than you may think in fact, you can have more than one domain pointing to your site. So if you just need an extra domain name, you only need to follow this step.

Note: Any links to your content using the old domain will take people to your 404 page or your home page. To fix this, youll need to set up redirections, which you can do with a plugin or in the SiteGround admin screens.

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You Can Copy All WordPress Core Files From Your Old Domain

With backup, it is simple to move website content from one site to another. Especially, when you dont switch to a new hosting provider.

Copy your backup file to your hosting dashboard.

Below, we will walk you through the steps of moving your website content to a new domain via Hostingers File Manager. Make sure that you have successfully added your add-on domain to your account before proceeding with these steps.

Meanwhile, if youre switching hosting, you will need to download your backup and upload it via the cPanels File Manager or an FTP client. Next, use phpMyAdmin to import the database and then update your WordPress configuration file. This will allow you to keep your sites both online.

Create A New Site Clone Or Update Existing Site Address

Once you have a backup of your site, the next step is to update your WordPress URL and site address. There are a few ways you can approach this.

• Option 3 Update existing domain

Option 1 Create New Site/Account

Your first option would be to create an entirely new WordPress install with your new domain and then migrate your data over. You would then change the domain after the fact. Why this approach? Sometimes people prefer to leave their old site intact for a while as another backup. Or perhaps you are also moving to a new WordPress host in the process as well.

In this case, you would simply create a second site. If youre a Kinsta client you would want to add a new install and ensure that your new domain is set as the primary domain. You can then migrate a copy of your WordPress site over. Check out our in-depth tutorial using the WordPress Duplicator plugin.

Option 2 Kinstas Clone Feature

If youre a Kinsta customer, you could go an even easier route and to utilize our one-click clone feature. This allows you to instantly create a copy of your existing WordPress site into a second account.

Option 3 Update Existing WordPress URL and Site Address

The third and final option would be to simply update your existing sites WordPress URL and site address. You would still need to follow these steps, even if you created or cloned a new site above.

• WordPress Address : The address of your WordPress core files.
• Site Address : The address to reach your blog.

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Why Would You Want To Change Your Domain Name

Its worth exploring some of the reasons you might change your domain. Here are a few common examples:

• Youve changed your business name Of course, if you change the name of your company due to an acquisition or shift in focus, youll want your website to change, too. When your domain name matches your business name, its easier for customers to find you.
• Youre rebranding When looking to attract new or different clientele, you might consider an updated domain name that better reflects your image. A new name that meshes with your brand voice can also help with marketing efforts.
• You want to change your domain extension Even if you only want to change your domain extension, you need to register for a new name. For example, if you started as a .org website but want to shift to a .com site URL to instill confidence, this guide is for you.

Submit New Sitemap Files

Now that you have new verified web properties and youve notified them about your domain change, its recommended to submit your new sitemap file. A sitemap is basically just a list of URLs that you want to be publicly available. This isnt required, but will most likely help speed up the crawling and re-indexing process.

If youre using the Yoast SEO plugin you can find a link to your XML sitemap file under SEO General. Click into the Features tab and then on the question mark tooltip next to the XML sitemaps header. The URL should look something like this: https://newdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

Submit Sitemap in Google Search Console

In Google Search Console you can submit your new sitemap under Index Sitemaps. Input the URL you grabbed from Yoast SEO and click on Submit.

Submit Sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools

In Bing Webmaster Tools you can submit your new sitemap under Crawl > Sitemaps. Click on Add/Test Sitemap and input the URL you grabbed from Yoast SEO.

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Redirect The Old WordPress Domain To The New One

This step is a bit optional but highly recommended! You should also consider keeping your old domain active temporarily to allow users to find you if they are unaware of the domain change on your website and also to ensure that search engines recognize the redirect to your new one.

This is an important step because it will help you maintain Google PageRank for your site, and your SEO work will not go to waste. To do this, well do a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new one.

The 301 redirect can be created using the .htaccess file, which we can modify in the same way as we did with the config file:

• Open the FileZilla FTP client .
• Connect to your server using your FTP details.
• Look for the .htaccess file in the public_html folder.
• Right-click on the wp-config.php file and select Edit.
• Insert the following code after replacing newdomain.net with your new domain.
• Save the file and upload it again to your server to replace the existing file.

• #Options + FollowSymLinks

Scenario : Completely Shifting To A New Domain Name

Its not uncommon for website owners to have a little buyers remorse after configuring domains. Sometimes you have a shift in the brand name or you realize that another domain is available that sounds catchier than the one you currently own.

Regardless of the reason, this means that youre trying to completely change the URL and move all website files to a new domain.

This process involves moving your entire WordPress installation to a new domain.

An example of this migration would be from myexamplesite.com to thebestsiteintheworld.com, where the primary domain is changed.

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