Media Relations & SEO PR Blog

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How to Change your Wordpress Blog to a Different URL

Posted: May 11th, 2007 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: EndGame PR Site News, Social Media Tactics |

I finally did it. I switched the URL of this blog, and I don’t think it’s going to hurt me too much. Also, it was absurdly easy!

Going forward, for the Media Relations & SEO PR Blog, please switch your links to http://www.endgamepr.com/blog. Previously the address was www.endgamepr.com/wordpress.

Here’s some background on why I did this:

When I first set up this blog, it was my first using Wordpress. I installed it through my web host. When I did it, I didn’t notice anywhere that asked me in what directory I wanted to install. Maybe it was there and I didn’t notice it, but regardless the end result was that my URL was www.endgamepr.com/wordpress. I didn’t really think about it for a long time. Then it started to bug me. I really wanted the address to be www.endgamepr.com/blog. But, by then I was starting to build up inbound links and had customized my theme (changed it since then, but still) and I didn’t want to mess up something that was working. I’m a big fan of not screwing up something that works.

Then, a guy named Paul (thanks, Paul!) emailed me to ask me about a plugin on this site. We got to chatting via email and the blog URL issue came up. He said “just change the name of the directory.” I knew it wasn’t quite that easy. There are a couple of other things that need to be done. But, it made me think for a moment, and I came up with the way to do it and NOT lose my inbound links.

Here’s how it’s done:

  1. Go into the Wordpress dashboard and click on “Options”. Where it says “Wordpress address (URI)” enter the NEW address of the blog. Below that, it says “Blog address (URI)”. If your old address is entered in, put the new one in there too.
  2. Using FTP access, go to your web directory. Change the name of the folder where your Wordpress files live to the NEW name. In my case, I renamed it “blog”, where before it was “wordpress”.
  3. Create another directory, and give it the old name. In my case, it’s called “wordpress”. This will be an empty directory.
  4. Create an .htaccess file. This needs to go in the ROOT (main) directory of your web folders. You may already have one there. If you have one simply add this line:
    Redirect 301 /oldfoldername http://www.yourwebsite.com/newfoldername
    Replace the folder and site names with your own, of course. If you don’t have an .htaccess file, it’s pretty easy to make one. Open Windows Notepad, enter the line I mentioned, and save the file as .htaccess. Then, upload it to the root of your web folder.

That’s it. If you do everything right, you should be able to access your site from the new directory you wanted, all of the links on your blog should point to the new one (unless you entered them by hand), and if someone enters your old address it will redirect to your new one. Additionally, all of the inbound links counted by Google, Yahoo and the others, will transfer over to your new URL. The 301 redirect tells the search engines that the site has been permanently moved.

The downsides of changing your blog URL:

There are always downsides, but they aren’t too horrible.

  • I noticed I lost ALL of my Diggs. They’re actually still there, but they’re pointing to the old URL so they don’t show up in the Digg counters next to my post. However, due to the 301 redirect, if someone finds something on Digg that points to this blog, at least they’ll be redirected here.
  • If you’re a fan of Technorati and use it to track people linking into your blog, you’re going to have to re-claim your blog. As far as I know, they won’t let you transfer everything over, because the links they’ve found are actually to your old URL.
  • Any other social media site that you may love that has you ranked high will have your new blog as being .. well, new. You’ll have to start over. Basically, if you’re going to do this, and you care what your ranking is, do it before you build up 400 inbound links or favorites or whatever.

That’s it. It really is pretty easy. Let me know in comments if you see any problem with this strategy!

 

 

25 Responses to “How to Change your Wordpress Blog to a Different URL”

  1. 186kps Says:
    July 6th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

    Thanks for posting this.
    I was running into dead ends until I came across your post!
    Excellent.

  2. Steve Says:
    July 6th, 2007 at 11:35 pm

    Glad I could help!

    -Steve

  3. Catherine Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

    Thanks! I found your post while I was in a mild panic after merely changing the folder name “to see what would happen”. You saved the day.

  4. Steve Says:
    September 12th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

    Great. I’m so glad it was helpful!!!

  5. Sugarapple Says:
    November 13th, 2007 at 10:53 am

    Exactly what I was looking for!!! I cannot believe I tried to search on wordpress and my hosting company’s site and google and then bam! you appeared. Thank you so much for posting this!!

  6. Steve Says:
    November 13th, 2007 at 11:12 am

    Good news … glad you found it!

  7. Jon Reil Says:
    November 24th, 2007 at 9:46 am

    Steve,
    Just got your comment on my site. I’ve been wanting to change my address over from wordpress to blog for some time now and finally did it. Thanks a ton! It was extremely easy to do.
    -Jon

  8. Steve Says:
    November 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

    Happy to help. The “/wordpress” to “/blog” switch seems to be a common problem. The way you found to do it seemed overly complicated.

  9. Scott Says:
    January 12th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    I’m getting ready to try …. I’ll let you know the outcome; how easy, how hard.

  10. Scott Says:
    January 13th, 2008 at 2:41 am

    Duh, I just got back from a sour date and a flat tire in the middle of the hi-way.

    Well, kudos, I did get my URL configured, and I think it may actually work.

  11. Bill Says:
    January 27th, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    I originally setup a wordpress site on one URL while I was waiting on a transfer request of my URL. Now that I have it transfered, I can’t get the new address to work. When you type in the URL, it just tries to redirect and just goes back and forth and never finds it. If you have any suggestions, please let me know via email. Thanks

  12. Nicolas Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Steve, thanks for the help with this great post, but now I have a little problem: All my Uploads Files, for some reason still with the old root to my localhost. I have change the URLs in the Options painel, and doing everything like change the DBase and upload my wordpress files, but the url of those continues like localhost.. could you help me please?

    Sorry for the bad english!

  13. Steve Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Hi Nicolas,

    Sorry you’re having issues. I assume what you’re saying is that you’ve managed to switch the address of the blog, but you have uploaded files into Wordpress and the URLs for those files are stuck with the old address. If that’s correct, I wish I could help you but I’m not sure I can. I don’t upload files that way, but I do know that when you do they end up in the “wp-uploads” directory. I would think that the addresses of those files would chance since the name of the Wordpress root directory has changed, but I’m not sure what’s up in your case.

    If anyone else has an idea — fire away.

    A side note since I hadn’t thought about folks who upload files this way — you’ll probably have to go back to old posts where you link to those files and change the URLs by hand. I don’t believe the 301 redirect will have any effect on things like graphics and other non-html files. This is a good reason to use FTP to upload files to a different folder (one that isn’t inside the Wordpress hierarchy) on your web server.

  14. Michael Aulia Says:
    February 20th, 2008 at 1:25 am

    I’m having a similar problem.. I’ve been using the url http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs all over the web and planning to change it to just http://www.michaelaulia.com to access my wordpress due to Pagerank, and other SEO issues..

    Why do you still want to use /blog instead of just endgamepr.com ?

  15. Steve Says:
    February 20th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    Michael–

    If you look at http://www.endgamepr.com you’ll see it’s my business site. This is my business blog. Thus, the “/blog”.

    Someday I do plan to use Wordpress as a CMS for that site, but I haven’t done it yet.

  16. ray Says:
    March 11th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    How to make your blog work completely with new URLs?

    1. Move it to a new dir

    2. Change the blog URL in Wordpress

    3. Export your MySQL database with:
    mysqldump -p -u [USERNAME] [DATABASENAME] > blog.sql

    4. Edit blog.sql with a text editor and replace all old URLs with new ones

    5. Feed your new databse back in MySQL with:
    mysql -p -u [USERNAME] [DATABASENAME]

  17. Steve Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Hi Ray,

    I believe I’ve heard that explanation before. I’m sure it works, but it requires quite a bit of knowledge and, to be frank, I get scared out of my wits when I have to edit the guts of my blog software like that. Really, I’m not sure I’d even know how to export an .sql file. I think my system works and is a little more user-friendly. Additionally, by using the 301 redirect, you minimize the loss of whatever inbound links you’ve built up.

    Steve

  18. Steve Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 10:09 am

    A side note for everyone, if you find this post helpful could you please give it a Digg or submit it to Stumbleupon, Reddit, or Delicio.us or whatever you generally use? I would really appreciate it!!!

  19. azto101 Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 2:15 am

    Hi

    I hope that you can help me out. At the moment we have the wordpress site http://crafttutorials.wordpress.com/ and i want to move it to http://www.newsite.com/blog i’m just wondering if i follow the steps above will they work in my case? We have hosting with WordPress as well.

    Any advice would be great. I really want to move the site to the new domain and then redirect the traffic from the old site.

  20. Steve Says:
    March 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    Hi Azto,

    No, this blog post will NOT help you do that. This post is concerned with moving your server-based blog from one folder to another without having to do a reinstall or lose your inbound links. You have a Wordpress.com blog (i.e. not based on your own server) and you want to move it to your own address. The way to do that is install your own server-based blog and import the content (if I recall, you can do that with an RSS feed). You can also check with Wordpress.com, because I’m fairly sure they have a system where you can pay a little bit and use your own URL rather than the “mysite.wordpress.com” address that you have right now.

    Good luck!

  21. Maryann Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    Hi Steve,

    Thanks for the help, my client really wanted this! It was so easy too even a year after you posted this article!

    Maryann

  22. Steve Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Glad I could help, Maryann. When I wrote this post I had no idea it would be useful to so many people!

    Steve

  23. Jasper's Blog Says:
    May 22nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm

    Veranderd van blog directory / folder

    Ben vandaag dan eindelijke van directory veranderd. Geen /wordpress meer, maar nu /log. Ik moest de map aanpassen, in settings of instellingen mijn pad naar mijn Wordpress map aanpassen en de Wordpress .htaccess wijzigen. Waarschijnlijk zo ook minder…

  24. Gorka Says:
    August 8th, 2008 at 12:08 am

    Thanks for the tip man, I was painfully thinking this was gonna take a while and a lot of effort.

    Cheers,
    Gorka
    México

  25. Steve Mullen Says:
    August 8th, 2008 at 12:15 am

    No problem, Gorka. I should probably have mentioned a LONG time ago, that if you don’t care about losing built-up SEO or inbound links, that the .htaccess step can be skipped .. which makes it that much easier.

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