How to change websites address?

Dav_Daddy

I've been having various problems with Bing Google and getting my site to show up in search results. After ruling out just about everything else I can imagine I believe I've narrowed it down to the free registrar I used being out of compliance with Icahn or something?

So I went and bought a domain, now what I'd like to do is just replace everything straight across from my old domain to the new. I'm using WordPress so I believe I need to do the following:

Update the DNS for the new address to point to where my current site is. Can I point the new address at the folder that is my old domains name or would I rename the folder to the new domain? I'd imagine the latter if I'm running find & replace on my database a couple steps later? I'd like to avoid have 2 copies of everything if possible, the whole site is only a bit over 300mb but that would still mean going from 10% to 20% capacity.
Get an SSL certificate for the new domain so I'm going from https:// to https://.
Backup my WordPress installation and my database using at least 2 different methods.
Once the DNS change goes through update WordPress settings to the new domain.
Do a find & replace on a copy of one of the database backups so everything points to the new address.
Setup 301 redirects so any exterior links still go to the right place.

At this point everything should work right so I can log into Google & Bing Webmaster portals and verify everything there.

Am I missing anything? This seems too easy, like when I tried to move my site over here only to find out that my old host used some type of screwy character set or something in their .sql that no one had ever heard of and after 3 days I said to heck with it and just copy pasted my content over from a backup I had downloaded and the Way Back Machine. I REALLY don't feel like doing that again if it's at all avoidable.

Thank you so much in advance you guys have been incredible so far. Once I get this ironed out -- and myself in front of a pc instead of this #&$@ing mobile -- I'd be happy to do writeup for the tutorials section if you'd like?

admin

Hi there!

Thanks for your message. From what I understand, you want to transfer your website to a new domain and you've asked if everything is planned correctly. Here are my suggestions to help you make sure you haven't missed anything:

Yes, you need to update the DNS for the new domain to point to where your current site is. You can do this at the server level or through your domain management panel.
If your current website has its own SSL account, you will need to register a new SSL account for the new domain.
Yes, after changing the DNS, you need to update the WordPress settings to the new domain.
You need to do a find and replace in database to ensure that all references to the site point to the new domain.
Yes, you need to set up 301 redirects to update old links and redirect traffic to the new site.
Yes, after completing all the steps, you can go to the Google and Bing Webmaster portals and verify all settings.

I hope this helps! If you need further assistance, please let me know.

Best regards!

dav-daddy

That's basically what I did except I varied it a little.

I decided to put the new domain in its own folder with a new ip. It's still the same domain name mostly "http://diygamecontrollers.ml" to ".win" I figured having the ".win" domain pointing to a folder that was named the old address with the ".ml" sounded like it would have confused me terribly and I'd make a mess of everything. _-- Honestly, I got kinda confused just typing that out. -- So, I:

Added the new domain with own properly named folder.
Downloaded a copy of my old database.
Created a new .sql database.
Installed WordPress and a plugin called "BackupMigration"
Got my SSL working.
Ran the Migration part of "BackupMigration"
Edited every instance of the .ml to .win in my copy of the old database.
Copied all of the values form the old database and imported them into the new one.
Ran a plugin called "Better Search Replace" to convert any instances of the .ml domain to the .win.
Setup all of my caching, tracking, analytics, etc.
If something isn't working, it's almost guaranteed to be an instance of the old domain still lurking around
somewhere.
Setup 301s from my old site to the new one.

Now instead of keeping the whole old WordPress installation in the old folder could I replace all of that with an .htaccess file that would 301 any incoming traffic to the new domain? All the addresses are identical bar the new extension.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to back out of writing that guide I proposed. I'm not 100% sure I captured every step here in the correct order. It didn't help that I installed like 3 different migration plugins just in case one didn't work, and I also had Cloudflare stuff going on confusing everything even more. I'd really hate to miss a step or mislead someone trying to do this for the first time. It's a minor miracle this went as smooth as it did. One recommendation I can make is that "BackupMigrate" plugin was a godsend! If anyone ever needs it, it's the one that has this as a logo:

That you so much for your help, you have no idea how much I appreciate it.

Oh! I had one other question. I noticed that the server takes a complete backup of the site every day. Is there a way to change that to say maybe once a week? I know that it doesn't count against my storage limit or anything, but it seems like a bit of waste of resources when I only post to the blog twice weekly at most. Being an awesome free service, I hate to hog any more than what I really need.

Thanks Cheers!

admin

dav-daddy Oh! I had one other question. I noticed that the server takes a complete backup of the site every day. Is there a way to change that to say maybe once a week? I know that it doesn't count against my storage limit or anything, but it seems like a bit of waste of resources when I only post to the blog twice weekly at most. Being an awesome free service, I hate to hog any more than what I really need.

It is not possible, we do not allow changing the frequency of our backup execution.
We are using (open)ZFS for backups - it is taking only changed data, so if you didn't change anything there will be no waste of resources.