How to Change WordPress Site to Use a Totally New URL on the Same Droplet?

Thanks again for your guidance. Just so I get this right, I’ll list the steps that I’ll be doing and hope you can confirm or correct me here:

1. New droplet
2. Link new url to the new droplet
3. install wordress, ssl
4. use a backup/restore plugin to move old wordpress site to new
5. use WinSCP to find the old droplet’s domain.config file, copy that to the same location of the new droplet
6. edit the domain config file with: server { server_name .mydomain.com; rewrite ^ http://www.adifferentdomain.com$request_uri? permanent; }

Question1: does the old domain need to be linked to the new droplet along with the new domain? (via DO domains workflow) Question2: is setting up server blocks mandatory in my case? does the old website need to be active in any way for redirects to work?

Thank you for your time

Hello there,

If you’ve already updated the Home and Site URLs from the WordPress admin panel then you can take the next step and update all the references for the IP address in your database as well.

There are few ways to update the references in your database and it’s totally up to you which one you’ll choose. You can either change them manually if they’re not many or use an automation tool like a plugin or an external app.

One of the external apps that I’ve used and I know for sure that it’s working okay is: https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-

You need to upload the script in your public_html folder and access in your browser, then you’ll need to fill in your database details and enter the old name (IP address) and the domain name you want to use. Then you can first use the dry-run option and if there are references that need to be updated you can then run the script and update them.

Also, an alternative way is to use a plugin called “Duplicator” it will update all of the paths and references from the dev domain to the main domain. This is why we usually recommend using a plugin called: Duplicator. The plugin will generate a backup for your website’s files and database. Then when you import the files to the new domain, all of the references for the old domain name will be updated properly with the correct ones.

Another option is to use the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. The plugin will do the replacement for you during import. You do not need to use any additional database search and replace

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration/

Once this is done you can check the site for any errors as there might be some hardcoded references for the IP address in the files like paths to directories, files and etc.

Hope this helps!