the_g_bomb

Yes, it was a manual move to show a client, progress so far. I uploaded to a temporary online location, so that they could look at progress before it went live. Because the original site was staying, I didn’t count it as a move as such.

I pretty much did the ordered list of things to do in the Fantastico instructions, copy all data over export -> edit/find & replace -> upload

The Moving WP to a New Server instructions do make sense to me now, didn’t seem to yesterday, go figure. But perhaps they could be clearer regarding the URI/URL changing like they are in the instructions for Moving WordPress Within Your Site.

Don’t get me wrong, I realise that its not that difficult, however I just think that it could be simpler. For example it could be possible to just mysqldump the database or export from phpmyadmin and just upload it to the other site. No need to export/import twice and change settings in between.

And going back the way would be just as easy. If the live site is running and I want my local copy to be current (with the latest changes in the database), I don’t really like the idea of changing my url settings even if it is only for the short time it takes to export the database, change the settings and export again and then replace the original database. The live site will still have to go offline for that period.

If the urls are relative there is no requirement to download, change settings, download again, upload back to the dev database and uploading to live, just download and upload in either direction. The ability to set the URL is already in wp-config.php as of version 2.2.

define('WP_HOME','https://example.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','https://example.com');

My suggestion was to leave them out of the database, the wp-config file has to be edited anyway to put in the db connection details so no major change there just 2 extra lines that need to be put in. The guid in wp-posts could just be /sample-post/ and have WP_HOME appended to the beginning.

Doesn’t help, when you are trying to maintain a development version and a live version.

The minute you change it in wp-admin/options-general.php in your development server it goes wonky, but you can get you live site up and running. All good.

When you try to get you development version running again to do some more testing and changing you have manually edit the database or export and find and replace and re-import.

Or scenario 2, you want your development version to have the latest version of the site, with logs and comments, but you can’t change the setting in wp-admin/options-general.php because you live site will go wonky.

OK, but why only mention changing the domain under the Fantastico instructions? Others that move their site don’t change the URL?

And having had a closer look at the Changing_The_Site_URL page as suggested, that page doesn’t really make it clear that the instructions under Domain Name Change need to be done as well if you are using the instructions under Changing the URL directly in the database. It looks like they are separate methods.