LornaJane

Relocating a Wordpress Installation

Friday, December 12. 2008

Wordpress is a fine basic website tool, and I've used it for a few different odds and ends. One thing it does have that suprises me every time is that it uses a setting for its web address. So as part of the install, it sets this setting and then everything works. Or rather it does, so long as the web address of the application doesn't change.

Well I'm working on something that I'm developnig locally, checking in to a subversion repository, and then deploying to another server (and other people will be doing the same when they collaborate with me). Wordpress isn't really designed for that, or for the situation where you have a copy of the database, and the code and need to restore it to a different place for any reason. The admin login form is accessible - but then submits to the old location before you can get in to change the settings.

Anyway it turns out to be really straight forward. The URL is in the database and a one-line query mends the problem. I'm putting it here for the next time I need it :)

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = 'http://new.path.to/blog" where option_name = 'siteurl';
 


I found some complicated instructions for moving a blog too - but this will also work for that scenario. This was wordpress 2.7 (their new and shiny version!), I'm not certain which other versions this would apply to but add a comment if you can expand on this please!
Posted by LornaJane in tech at 18:22 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)
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Useful to know!

I’ve used export/import XML before, when moving between hosting providers.

#1 Simon on 2008-12-12 19:06 (Reply)

There’s some information on this sort of thing on the WordPress Codex at:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL

WordPress is generally very crap about moving a blog from one location to another, whether it be from a development site to a production site or from URL to another. The instruction for moving your site from one hostname to another are unbelievably complicated and come with scary warnings:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL#Domain_Name_Change

You can also define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://...’) in wp-config.php to set the site url dynamically. (This also marks it uneditable in the admin interface.

#2 Michael S. (Homepage) on 2008-12-12 19:41 (Reply)

All I can say LornaJane, is that you are *ing brilliant!
I’ve moved older versions of Wordpress, and it is remarkably easy. But I can’t quite remember how I did it. And I didn’t think to post the solution on my blog…

#3 cereal_girl on 2008-12-13 05:33 (Reply)

I’m working on a project at the moment with the same problem.

I think the easiest solution is just to omit the wp_config table when exporting your SQL locally.

Or just copy the SQL into an update file in your repository. Then you can just run the file and execute the query.

#4 Gavin Williams (Homepage) on 2008-12-14 14:04 (Reply)

Simon: good tip!

Michael: Ah, you can set it in the config … that could be a much easier way of doing it, thanks :)

cereal_girl: I actually use this blog instead of a brain, things go here that I know will leak out through my ears and be lost forever if I don’t record them!

Gavin: The separate SQL could work – although now I know I can put this setting in a config, I might change it to use server-specific config in future. So many possibilities …

#5 LornaJane (Homepage) on 2008-12-15 09:38 (Reply)

I’d used the Quick Fix method at http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL but the config option looks much more sensible. Especially for dev->staging->live setups where you may need to do this a lot.

Strange they don’t cover that in the docs.

resists urge to say something rude about WordPress

#6 Sophie Dennis (Homepage) on 2008-12-17 11:45 (Reply)

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Tyrone about PHP5 Soap Server
Thu, 02.09.2010 14:14
Hi Lorna Jane, Thanks for all this – the info on PHP and Soap on the Net is a total mess. Some choosing to to use nusoap.php – which now doesnt even exist anymore. Great work using this method I was up and running very quickly. However – this method only shows a call passing one paramet [...]
LornaJane about Wordpress Automatic Update Asking for FTP
Wed, 01.09.2010 13:03
Thanks so much to everyone that has dropped in and said that this tip is working for them – I had to refer back to this myself the other day to remind me how to get around the FTP prompt!
sherra about Wordpress Automatic Update Asking for FTP
Fri, 27.08.2010 04:17
great insight. thank you. I moved my blog and forgot what I needed to do to avoid ftp. your suggestion works like a charm.
Carl Nobile about Logrotate Error on Ubuntu
Fri, 27.08.2010 00:16
This issue seems to happen when you move a DB from one machine to another as I did. The procedure you describe above should be put into MySQL documentation. You should put in a bug report to the MySQL people as their documentation needs to updated. And yes the PASSWORD parameter needs to be re [...]
Rudger Gravestein about One-Step Symlink Switch
Mon, 23.08.2010 09:19
i also move the current, so in case of non working result, i can easily move it back. mv -fT current fallback; mv -fT next current;
Anon about One-Step Symlink Switch
Sun, 22.08.2010 19:43
This is a convenient way to upgrade, and is certainly a good thing for development / testing environments. On a busy site there might be a slim risk this technique could be problematic. Although the file system is updated in an atomic transaction, a web browser could still read from both the [...]
Les about Working with Web Services - Froscon 2010
Sun, 22.08.2010 17:35
Once more you shine girl yer its true you’re a PHP babe :D
Edmar about One-Step Symlink Switch
Sat, 21.08.2010 20:17
Nice to see a post about this. :-) 100% of our deploys are done using symlinks. We copy our releases into revision-specific folders (which are rev123, rev124, etc.). Deploy is done using: cd /software-revisions-folder ln -sf rev124 current To revert: ln -sf rev123 current Thi [...]
Deep C about One-Step Symlink Switch
Fri, 20.08.2010 19:09
This is very interesting and helpful tip. I just felt its quite similar to adding a new node to link list in C and moving pointer to next :)