Question
Setting up domain with WordPress
- Posted on July 31, 2019
- WordPressInitial Server SetupGetting StartedUbuntu 18.04
Asked by Albert Johnson
Hey,
Looking at DigitalOcean for hosting my WP Site. It’s the cheapest but I am a bit of a noob so sorry if this is a really dumb question.
Once I’ve migrated my site, and it’s on the IP I get for my droplet and I am ready to go live and switch hosts. I then go into networking, put it in, and then put the details in on my website etc.
Do I just set the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL), to my domain and it should work from there?
Thanks
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Hello,
Before making the DNS change I would recommend testing your website with your hosts file.
You can edit the hosts file on your PC to bypass the DNS lookup and access the site on your Digital Ocean server through your main domain rather than the droplet’s IP address.
This only affects your PC and visitors to your website will see the site as normal.
The location of the file is as follows:
Windows PC c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts
Mac OSX /private/etc/hosts
Linux /etc/hosts
Just open it up in your favorite text editor (e.g. Notepad) and add that line on the bottom:
Make sure tho change the
Your.Droplets.IP.Addresswith the actual IP address of the droplet and the yourdomain.com part with your actual domainOnce you have made the change, save the file then clear your browsers’ cache and browse to your website as normal.
You will see it served from our systems and will be able to test the full functionality of your Wordpress site.
To view the site on your existing host, just remove the line from your hosts file. If everything is working as normal, then you can proceed with the DNS change and point your domain to the Droplet’s IP address.
Also I would recommend following this step by step guide on the Digital Ocean website on how to migration your website with zero downtime:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-migrate-wordpress-from-shared-hosting-to-a-cloud-server-with-zero-downtime
Let me know if you have any questions. Bobby