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There are times when you need to move WordPress around within your server, and times when you need to move WordPress from one server to another. You don't need to reinstall. WordPress is flexible enough to handle all of these situations.

When Your Domain Name and URLs Do Not Change

Moving your domain without changing the Home and Site URLs of your WordPress site is very simple, and in most cases can be done by moving the files.

• If database and URL remains the same, you can move by just copying your files and database.
• If database name or user changes, edit wp-config.php to have the correct values.
• If you want to test before you switch, you must temporarily change "siteurl" and "home" in the database table "wp_options" (through phpMyAdmin or similar).
  If you had any kind of rewrites (permalinks) setup you must disable .htaccess and reconfigure permalinks when it goes live.

If you are changing to a new server but same domain, all you need to do is edit wp-config.php with your new database/user information and upload everything as it is to your new server.

When Your Domain Name or URLs Change

When your domain name or URLs change - i.e. from http://example.com/blog to http://example.com, or http://example.com to http://newexample.com - there are additional concerns. The files and database can be moved, however references to the old domain name or location will remain in the database, and that can cause issues with links or theme display.

If you do a search and replace on your entire database to change the URLs, you can cause issues with data serialization, due to the fact that some themes and widgets store values with the length of your URL marked. When this changes, things break. To avoid that serialization issue, you have two options:

1. Only perform a search and replace on the wp_posts table.
2. Use the Search and Replace for WordPress Databases Script to safely change all instances.

On Your Existing Server

Moving the WordPress files from one location on your server to another - i.e. changing its URL - requires some special care. If you want to move WordPress to it's own folder, but have it run from the root of your domain, please read Giving WordPress Its Own Directory for detailed instructions.

Here are the step-by-step instructions to move your WordPress site to a new location on the same server:

1. Create the new location using one of these two options:
   1. If you will be moving your WordPress core files to a new directory, create the new directory.
   2. If you want to move WordPress to your root directory, make sure all index.php, .htaccess, and other files that might be copied over are backed up and/or moved, and that the root directory is ready for the new WordPress files.
2. Login to your blog.
3. Go to the Administration > Settings > General panel.
4. In the box for WordPress address (URI): change the address to the new location of your main WordPress core files.
5. In the box for Site address (URL): change the address to the new location, which should match the WordPress (your public site) address (URI).
6. Click Save Settings.
7. (Do not try to open/view your blog now!)
8. Move your WordPress core files to the new location. This includes the files found within the original directory, such as http://example.com/wordpress, and all the sub-directories, to the new location.
9. If you are using Permalinks, go to the Administration > Settings > Permalinks panel and update your Permalink structure to your .htaccess file, which should be in the same directory as the main index.php file.
10. Existing image/media links uploaded media will refer to the old folder and must be updated with the new location. You can do this with the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin, or with a search and replace tool, or manually in your SQL database, by following the instructions at Tamba2's Tutorial "Moving your weblog inside your PC".
11. You must also check and edit 'store uploads folder' under Settings > Media or all your new uploads will continue to go into the old folder.
12. In some cases your permissions may have changed, depending on your ISP. Watch for any files with "0000" permissions and change them back to "0644".
13. If your theme supports menus, links to your home page may still have the old subdirectory embedded in them. Go to Appearance::Menus and update them.
14. Sometimes you would need to restart your server, otherwise your server may give out an error. (happens in MAMP software (Mac)).

It is important that you set the URI locations BEFORE you move the files.

If you forget to change the locations

If you accidentally moved the files before you changed the URIs: you have two options.

1. Suppose the files were originally in /path/to/old/ and you moved them to /path/to/new before changing the URIs. The way to fix this would be to make /path/to/old/ a symlink (for Windows users, "symlink" is equivalent to "shortcut") to /path/to/new/, i.e. ln -s /path/to/new /path/to/old and then follow the steps above as normal. Afterwards delete the symlink if you want.

1. If you forget to change the WordPress Address and Blog Address, you will be unable to change it using the wordpress interface. However, you can fix it if you have access to the database. Go to the database of your blog and find the wp_options table. This table stores all the options that you can set in the interface. The WordPress Address and Blog Address are stored as siteurl and home (the option_name field). All you have to do is change the option_value field to the correct URL for the records with option_name=’siteurl‘ or option_name=’home‘.

If you have accidentally changed your WordPress site URL

Suppose you accidentally changed the URIs where you cannot move the files. (but still can access the login page, through a redirection or something)

wp-login.php can be used to (re-)set the URIs. Find this line:

require( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php' );

and insert the following lines below:

//FIXME: do comment/remove these hack lines. (once the database is updated)
update_option('siteurl', 'http://your.domain.name/the/path' );
update_option('home', 'http://your.domain.name/the/path' );

You're done. Test your site to make sure that it works right. If the change involves a new address for your blog, make sure you let people know the new address, and consider adding some redirection instructions in your .htaccess file to guide visitors to the new location.

Changing The Site URL also provides the details of this process!

Moving to a New Server

If you are moving WordPress from one server to another, begin by backing up your data. This includes backing up your WordPress database as well as all the core files, images, plugins, and other files on your site. See WordPress Backups and Backing Up Your Database for more details.

• Note: If you are changing to a new server but same domain, all you need to do is edit wp-config.php with your new database/user information and upload everything as it is to your new server.

If You Don't Care If Your Old Blog Works

1. Download a copy of the main wordpress files from your OLD blog to your hard drive and edit wp-config.php to suit the new server.
2. Go back to your OLD blog and go to Administration > Settings > General and change the url (both of them) to that of your new site.
3. Login on your server and go to phpmyadmin and export as file and save your database (but keep the old one just in case), upload this new database and the copy of the wordpress core files with the edited wp-config.php to your new server. Thats it!

If You Want Your Old Blog To Still Work

Caution: Make sure you have a backup of your old blog's WordPress database before proceeding!

Part A - Activating Your New Blog

1. Download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your OLD blog's installation.
2. Download your database.
3. Go back to your OLD blog and go to options and change the url (both of them) to that of your new site.
4. Again, download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your NEW blog's installation.
5. Download your database once again (but keep the old one). Upload this database to your new server. It will be easiest if you use the same database name and you create a user with the same login credentials on your new server as on your old server.
6. If you used a different database name and/or user (see previous step), edit wp-config.php in your NEW blog's installation folder appropriately.
7. Upload the NEW blog's installation folder to your new site. Presto, your NEW blog should be working!

Part B - Restoring Your Old Blog

1. On the original server, delete your OLD blog's database (remember, you should have a copy on your local computer that you made at the very beginning).
2. Upload your OLD blog's installation folder to your original server, overwriting the files that are currently there (you may also delete the installation folder on the server and simply re-upload the OLD blog's files).
3. Upload your OLD blog's database from your local computer to the server. That should do it!

Another procedure for making copies of posts, comments, pages, categories and custom field (post status, data, permalinks, ping status...) easy to follow:

1. Install a new Wordpress blog
2. Go on old blog Admin panel. Here, in Manage > Export select "all" in menu Restrict Author.
3. Click on Download Export File
4. In new blog go on Manage > Import, choose Wordpress item.
5. In the page that will be shown, select the file just exported. Click on Upload file and Import
6. It will appear a page. In Assign Authors, assign the author to users that already exist or create new ones.
7. Click on Submit
8. At the end, click on Have fun

Note: using this method if there are some articles in new blog (like hello world, info page...), these will not be erased. Articles are only added. Using the former procedure the article in new blog will be deleted.

Moving WordPress Multisite

Multisite is far more complicated to move, as the database itself has multiple references to the server name as well as the folder locations. If you're simply moving to a new server with the same domain, you can copy the files and database over, exactly as you would a traditional install.

If, instead, you are changing domains, then the best way to move Multisite is to move the files, edit the .htaccess and wp-config.php (if the folder name containing Multisite changed), and then manually edit the database. Search for all instances of your domain name, and change them as needed. This step cannot yet be easily automated. It's safe to search/replace any of the wp_x_posts tables, however do not attempt blanket search/replace without the Search and Replace for WordPress Databases script.

If you're moving Multisite from one folder to another, you will need to make sure you edit the wp_blogs entries to change the folder name correctly. You should manually review both wp_site and wp_blogs regardless, to ensure all sites were changed correctly.

Also manually review all the wp_x_options tables and look for 'three fields and edit as needed:

• home
• siteurl
• fileupload_url

If you are moving from subdomains to subfolders, or vice-versa, remember to adjust the .htaccess file and the value for SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL in your wp-config.php file accordingly.

Additional Information

• How to move WordPress site to another server with zero downtime
• Moving a blog from wordpress.com to self-hosted blog
• Moving WordPress to a new domain or server
• Italian version of this article - Versione italiana dell'articolo
• How to move WordPress to a new domain or location
• How to move a WordPress Blog or Website
• Search and Replace for WordPress Databases