Moving WordPress Development Site to ‘Live’ Site
I just recently moved a WordPress site I’ve been developing using a different domain name to its final destination as a ‘live’ site. I’ve done this several times before but this time I wanted to document the process for future reference.
The development site is sdspreview.com. The current site is named 3dogfarm.com and is an HTML site. The two sites are both on GoDaddy but under different accounts.
Here is the process I used:
On Development Site –
- Bring up to date all plugins, etc.
- Install the Go Live Update urls plugin
- Go to Settings > general and change wordpress address and site address to 3dogfarm.com
Log in to hosting for sdspreview.com
Go to root directory for the site, select all files and Archive (Compress) into zip file.
Download zip file to my PC
Go to PHPMYADMIN and export database to PC.
Go to hosting where WordPress site will be. Install WordPress in root folder.
Locate WordPress database that was just created. Import the database that was exported to PC.
Upload zip file to root folder.
Extract zipped file to root folder.
Go to Databases and find out the database name, username, password, and MySQL host name.
Go to root and edit wp-config.php – update the database name, username, password, and MySQL host name.
Log into the site – reset password if you’ve forgotten it.
Run the Go Live Update URLs plugin to change any lingering occurrences of the old url. Sometimes this plugin recommends against updating the tables for certain plugins. When that happens, I usually do skip those tables and then do a search and replace in PHPMyAdmin using the queries in this article: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress/how-to-change-wordpress-urls-in-mysql-database-using-phpmyadmin#gref
Review any widgets to ensure no old urls are there.
Enter Google Analytics code and set search engines to allow indexing.
Sometimes I also have to go to Permalinks and just click Update to fix any old URLs.
Done!
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