I changed my site's URL and my site has the white screen

Hi,

Aside from changing the URL in the Dashboard, you also need to move the directory. Please follow the instructions here:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Moving_WordPress#Moving_Directories_On_Your_Existing_Server
You would need to do the steps from step 8 onwards.

Hope that helps!

Thanks HS!

My site was always world4awayfarer.com but that was redirecting from what was in FTP: https://www.world4awayfarer.com. I wanted to just have it not redirect and be https://www.world4awayfarer.com. So I tried to change that in general settings, but then I looked in the database and it’s just world4awayfarer.com.

Should I be changing in the database to reflect https://www.world4awayfarer.com?
In FTP it was https://www.world4awayfarer.com and I created a new directory named world4awayfarer.com and moved everything.

When I tried the steps on the link you listed I got:
Not Found
The requested URL /wp-admin/ was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2 Server at world4awayfarer.com Port 80

I am afraid I’ve got in over my head!!

Thank you, but can you see maybe something that is wrong? Should my functions.php file under my theme have this added:
<?php
update_option(‘siteurl’,’https://world4awayfarer.com&#8217;);
update_option(‘home’,’https://world4awayfarer.com&#8217;);
?>

as well one of the suggestions was to add code into wp-config.php:
define(‘WP_HOME’,’https://world4awayfarer.com&#8217;);
define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’https://world4awayfarer.com&#8217;);

Thank you.

Hi,

Sorry, I did not realize you were just moving your URL from world4awayfarer.com to https://www.world4awayfarer.com.

First, move your directory back to what it was before.

Then, try undoing the edits you made to revert it to what it was before you moved the URL (at least as much as you remember).

Let me know how far you got and we’ll start from there.

@honey Silvas: there is no reason for @erykann23 to need to move directories or go through that process.

@erykann23: Were you simply trying to add www to your URL?

If you wanted to simply add www to your URL, add that to both URLs in settings and then save permalinks. There is no need to go into the database.

Ok, I tried going back to the beginning. I took the extra info out of the functions.php and wp-config.php and returned the ftp directory to https://www.world4awayfarer.com.

Thank you so much for your help.

Also, just so you have the complete story. I was also fiddling with this as a recommendation and not sure if I need to do anything else to make it work correctly:
Disable And Change The wp-login.php Page

Steps to fix:

Install the All In One WP Security & Firewall WordPress plugin.
Go to the Brute Force tab of the plugin’s settings and you’ll find a text field where you can customize where you want your login page to appear. Choose something difficult for anyone else to guess, but something easy for you to remember.

so mine now has a “bryant07” added somewhere. Not sure if that affects anything now.

I have not changed anything in the permalinks since I was locked out as soon as I changed the URLs in the General Settings.

@songdogtech
Yes, sorry, I misinterpreted her initial question. I thought she was changing directories, not just changing from non-www to www.

@erykann23
What he said. ??

@songdogtech
How can I do all this if I’m locked out of the site, and it is currently down?

Thanks!

When you go to your database, in the wp_options table, what is the value in these two fields?

siteurl
home

https://world4awayfarer.com in both of them

Just double check the spelling of that in the database and make sure they are both spelled correctly, complete with the https://
Sometimes it’s misspelled by one letter.

What else did you change in the database?

Just those two: siteurl and home.

I tried it changing them to https://www.world4awayfarer and then that didn’t do anything. I changed it back to https://world4awayfarer.com. I didn’t change anything else in the database.

Maybe this happened. When I changed my theme’s functions.php file or the wp-config.php file, maybe when I went to revert back to the original, it took the original from when I first uploaded wordpress. Could that be what took the site down?

I checked and the siteurl and home are the same in the db

It’s possible.

Check the wp-config file and there should be something like this:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Your database username and password should be written there, so if you see your database password there, then you are good.

Try also disabling your plugins by temporarily renaming your wp-content/plugins folder to wp-content/plugins_old.

What is was your ftp directory before? Was it https://www.world4awayfarer.com or just https://www.world4awayfarer.com
?