Hi folks,

 

as some of you know I've recently been trying to migrate my old site to a WordPress platform and it's progressing much more smoothly now thanks to the advice I've received on here. I do, however, have a question about what happens when it finally comes to making it live.

 

Currently I've created a subdirectory and am building the site in that, which I'm led to understand is fairly common practice so as not to interfere with the existing site. Within my pages there are a good many back-links to other articles/pages that currently contain a subdirectory that won't exist when the site is moved to the main domain directory. Am I right in thinking that I will need to go back through all the pages and correct those links before I migrate the site?

 

Cheers,
​Marc.

When you migrate the site there are a number of 'find and replace' plugins you can use to update all the links.

 

That sub-directory won't have any relevance in the new site as everything will now be within the WP database

When you migrate the site there are a number of 'find and replace' plugins you can use to update all the links.

 

I'm confused, why do you need a plugin up update links, doesn't WP have config settings for this, e.g. change domain and site server path once and have it apply everywhere?

When you migrate a site you change the site settings which will update all the permalinks in the database but it won't necessarily update every link in your posts, pages, widgets, media, comments and so on. So it makes sense to run a check of the whole database just to make sure nothing has got missed.

 

I did a migration the other day for a client. There were about 17,000 links (it was a big site) and around 300 needed updating.

 

If you have the knowledge you can do this with mySQL and other tools. If you don't then a plugin can do this for you. All you do is enter the test site URL then the new site URL and run the checker. Most have a 'trial run' option so you can see what's going to be changed.

Thanks Graham. That's a relief!

 

I'm confused, why do you need a plugin up update links, doesn't WP have config settings for this, e.g. change domain and site server path once and have it apply everywhere?

 

WP will store absolute URL's in the database for things like the WYSIWYG editor.

 

At work we use a plugin called Better Search Replace, it works really well, and lets you do a 'dry run' before you commit to updating your DB.