How to Transfer a WordPress Blog to a Different Directory

Quite often, bloggers install WordPress in a subdirectory only to find out later on that they want their blog in the root directory of their domain. The root directory allows visitors to type the domain name and access the blog without having to navigate to a subdirectory. Transferring a WordPress blog to another directory is easy to do.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Transfer your WordPress files to a neutral location. In other words download your current installation to our hard drive or to a storage device. This will not only serve as a backup of your installation files, it makes it easier to upload the files to the new directory.

2. Sign into your Word press account and can navigate to the “Settings” section found under the “Design” heading.

3. Change the WordPress address (URL) to reflect the new location of your blog and modify the Blog address (URL) to reflect the new blog location and save your changes. WordPress kicks you out of your administrative account immediately after saving the new location information. The current installation no longer recognizes the old location address.

4. Upload the WordPress files to the new directory. Retain the same file structure

5. Sign into the new WordPress installation to ensure that all of the files transferred correctly. The fact that you can log into the new WordPress installation means that the transfer went as planned.

6. Check for broken links. Navigate throughout your blog to ensure the links and images display correctly.

Tips & Warnings

• Redirect your links from the old blog to the new one. The best and easiest way to perform the redirect is to use the .htaccess 301 redirect method. The coding would look something like this:

• redirect 301 /oldblog/ http://www.newblog.com/index.php

• Mal functioning links and images are a function of using relative paths. If your blog points to images and links that are not located within the directories of your original WordPress installation, there is a possibility that you may have a few broken links. Broken links are easy enough to fix once you find them. Sites like W3C.org have free link valuators to help you find broken links.

Resources

• SiteBuild.com
• W3C Link Checker
• WordPress.com