Website domain help for an idiot

[Martin]

Hey guys! Does anyone know anything about websites?

Basically, I run a website for my band and I previously used a joomla installation (although inside a wordpress installation which is weird), but we were facing all kinds of security issues due to outdated plugins and stuff.

I've made a brand new site using a new wordpress installation, but using a subdomain- which is currently test.example.com

What I'm trying to figure out is how I get the new site to transfer over to my main domain of example.com so that I can delete the old installation etc now that the new site is ready to become the actual site and not a test site anymore.


If it makes any difference I used softaculous to do the installations.


Cheers! :)

[The Don]

Hey guys! Does anyone know anything about websites?

Basically, I run a website for my band and I previously used a joomla installation (although inside a wordpress installation which is weird), but we were facing all kinds of security issues due to outdated plugins and stuff.

I've made a brand new site using a new wordpress installation, but using a subdomain- which is currently test.example.com

What I'm trying to figure out is how I get the new site to transfer over to my main domain of example.com so that I can delete the old installation etc now that the new site is ready to become the actual site and not a test site anymore.


If it makes any difference I used softaculous to do the installations.


Cheers! :)

https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/

The "getting started" section should hopefully help you do it

[Joe]

There's more qualified people to explain about this than me but surely its just a case of opening up an FTP client, and almost clicking and dragging the contents of your PUBLIC_HTML folder to the normal site. I'll probably be v wrong, but in the off chance I'm spot on, you're WELCOME.

[xxMATTGxx]

I can help you with this if you still need help.

[Martin]

https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/

The "getting started" section should hopefully help you do it

I had a look at that but it seems to be more for getting a completely new domain rather than moving from a subdomain to a root domain. It mentions changing the DNS and stuff and I'm not sure I would need to do all that?


There's more qualified people to explain about this than me but surely its just a case of opening up an FTP client, and almost clicking and dragging the contents of your PUBLIC_HTML folder to the normal site. I'll probably be v wrong, but in the off chance I'm spot on, you're WELCOME.

I have a feeling that the contents of the new site are already in the public_html folder as they are just softaculous installations.


I can help you with this if you still need help.

That would be amazing, yes please! This is stressing me out far too much haha!

[Martin]

I'm wondering whether the clone feature on softaculous would work? If I was to clone it to the old domain?

[xxMATTGxx]

All sorted :)

[Martin]

Sorted now! Matt is a genius/lifesaver! THANK YOU MATT :D

[tMarc]

Glad you got this sorted out,

To brief anybody else that might have this issue.

If you're looking to get someone to see your updated site, which happens to be on another domain, but you want the same branding as another.

I suggest a 301 redirect, though this can hurt your rankings with the search engines. If you do this, be sure to have an account on Google and report the 301 redirect.

If you'd like to "clone" your website, this is a bit harder to understand and if you mess up you may screw your entire site:

1: create a backup of your database.

2: download and backup the SQL from your site using PHPmyadmin.

3: compress your entire site into a folder within the folder, using FileManager, download this compressed file.

4. map the new domain.

5. upload the compressed files to the new domain's folder & extract them.

6. create an SQL database (Store these credentials) and assign user permissions (FULL ACCESS!)

7. Upload the downloaded SQL database to the newly created one.

8. Edit the file "wp-options" to reflect your new domain (siteurl, home)

9. (optional) edit the "wp-users" tab, create a new username, create a new password and set the adjacent field to "MD5" (You don't have to do this if you want to keep the same credentials as before!)

10. Go into the File Manager, locate (within new domain's folder) the "wp-config" file.

11. Edit this file and change the credentials in there to match the SQL (The credentials you saved before from when you made the SQL database! Match these credentials TO THE "T"!)

12. Delete the files and folder from the previous domain (If this is your main domain, just delete the files).

13. Delete the SQL Database for the previous domain.



The latter method IS NOT THE SAFEST, but the first method WILL AFFECT YOUR RANKINGS IN SEARCH ENGINES (If you care about that [SEO Specialist])

Alternatively, if you didn't understand ANY of this, get someone who does, or someone who knows how to do it!

PS. You can also use FileZilla in the stead of File Manager.

Hope this helps all in the future!