When I move a WordPress blog, what do I have to change (database/file) to have the site test-run without changing the DNS?

Question

i.e. http://xx.xx.x.xxx/wp-login.php redirects to blog at existing site www.my-blog.com

Answer 1

Maybe http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress ?

And: to update WordPress options with the new blog location, use the following SQL command:

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

After that you will need to fix URLs of the WordPress posts and pages, which translated from post slug, and stored in database wp_posts table as guid field. The URL values in this field are stored as absolute URLs instead of relative URLs, so it needs to be changed with the following SQL query:

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'http://www.old-domain.com','http://www.new-domain.com');

If you have linked internally within blog posts or pages with absolute URLs, these links will point to wrong locations after you move the blog location. Use the following SQL commands to fix all internal links to own blog in all WordPress posts and pages:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com');

Answer 2

It sounds like you're trying to move a Wordpress blog to a new host but you don't want to update the public DNS entry until you test it in its new location.

Many web server configurations use a single IP address that is used for multiple websites. The server figures out which site you want based on the name in the request.

So, to test your blog before updating the public DNS records, the easiest thing to do is edit your hosts file with the same change you will eventually make in DNS. This way, your own machine resolves the name to the new IP address but the rest of the world is still using the old one.

Here's info on the hosts file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_%28file%29

Answer 3

The most important two tables to update are the '_options' and '_posts' tables. Just do a SQL find and replace for your dev site URL and replace it with the live site URL. I always go through all tables with the find and replace to be safe, but those two tables should take care of most everything. (Obviously depending on your plugins this could change.)