Switching Domains, Same Host, Both Sites Remaining

  • I searched but couldn’t find this scenario and can’t figure out enough about it by looking at the other threads to feel comfortable. This is what I have going on:

    I have built a new site using wordpress for someone on domain.net. They have an existing site, which they are going to keep up, on domain.com.

    I want the wordpress site to be on domain.com and the old site to be on domain.net. They are both hosted at NS.

    What are my steps?

    Thanks in advance.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Hi zackl111,

    1) Make full backups of both sites (including databases).
    2) If the WordPress site isn’t fully live just yet, remove the WordPress installation on the .net domain and upload the files from the current .com site.
    3) Make sure everything copied over correctly to .net (review pages and links, etc.)
    4) Remove current .com files and upload WordPress files. Change site url as needed for WordPress so that it references .com instead of .net for the site url.

    The following links should be helpful as well:

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Moving_WordPress

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Changing_The_Site_URL

    Hope this helps!

    Thread Starter zackl111

    (@zackl111)

    Thank you for the response!

    Those two links are what I am looking at and can’t figure out – it seems like there is something I am missing.

    It isn’t possible to just change the DNS on the two sites, I need to actually move the files? I think that I can use the database that was created for the wordpress install on the .com site as it’s the same NS account.

    Hi zackl111,

    If I understood you correctly they are hosted on the same server, so there’s no easy DNS change that can be made.

    Depending on how you have your domains setup (is one a main domain and the other an Addon) you could ask your host to change the document root for the main domain, but you would still need to change the site URL for WordPress since you are changing it from .net to .com. You would also then have to change the folder the other domain points to as well. This isn’t normally a recommended practice since it involves changing the normal way the server handles files.

    Moving files isn’t as hard as you might think and if you back everything up first you’ll be fine. Yes, you should be able to leave the database alone when moving the site files. I recommend backing up everything when making major changes like this because in the event something goes wrong, you want a backup of everything, just in case.

    Hope this clarifies things a bit.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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