Change domain name, but keep everything else?

By Drupppal on 22 May 2009 at 15:48 UTC

I Installed Drupal 6.x a month ago, and invested a considerable amount of time tweaking and writing few blog nodes. But now I want to change the domain name to a different one.

Is it possible to upload the database and all the files of domain-1 to domain-2, and expect everything to be working fine and normal as usual? I am aware that I have to edit links I created that contains the old domain name in the nodes and Primary Menu. This is fine.

But will there be any internal implications within the database or core files that is associated and embedded with the old domain when I initially installed it, that is likely to cause problems due to a new domain name?

Is this a common practice, have you ever done this? Need your pointers please. How would you do this?

Comments

Moving to another domain is

cog.rusty commented 22 May 2009 at 16:28

Moving to another domain is no problem.

If the new domain is not on the same server you may encounter a few difficulties (or not) with clean URLs etc but nothing that can't be fixed.

Besides the links in the content and the location of your "files" directory, also check for any references to the old domain in your .htaccess and settings.php files.

Hi, The new domain will be on

Drupppal commented 22 May 2009 at 16:45

Hi,

The new domain will be on a new host, therefore a new server. So what are the "few difficulties" I might encounter that I can prepare for to prevent it?

location of your "files" directory

The location of my "files" is/will be the in same place as before. Do you mean change of the link located in the Administration page, or what did you mean by this?

Also check for any references to the old domain in your .htaccess and settings.php files.

Other than these two files, is there any other files that contains references to the old domain?

thanks

Often clean URLs don't work

cog.rusty commented 22 May 2009 at 16:58

Often clean URLs don't work on the new server and some tweaks are needed in the .htaccess file (removing some Options lines which are not allowed in the new server, or setting "RewriteBase /" instead of leaving it commented out, or...) You can't know until you see it.

No problem with the location of your "files" directory if it is the same as before. Sometimes people with multisites put their files under sites/example.com/files, which then is recorded in the database for each file... you can see the problem for moving if example.com changes.

Normally only those two files are where you (not drupal) may have added something specific to a domain name. Some redirects or rewriterules in .htaccess, or a $base_url in settings.php.

Often clean URLs don't work

Drupppal commented 22 May 2009 at 19:41

Often clean URLs don't work on the new server

Is this the case in general whenever changing a server for all drupal sites, or does it only occur when changing domain names of the drupal site, like what I am planing on doing?

It is just a matter of

cog.rusty commented 22 May 2009 at 19:48

It is just a matter of differences between server configurations in different hosts. What they allow in an .htaccess file, whether or not they require a RewriteBase line in the .htaccess file, and whether you had to change something in .htaccess in the old host which does not work on the new host (for example to change php version).

Most times there is no problem. If there is, what you need to do depends on the specific errors that you see.

My experience

manop commented 22 May 2009 at 16:50

I would like to just share my experience. When I moved mine, it worked very well except two things, clean URL (.htaccess file already mentioned above) and memory limit.

Memory limit need to be set somewhere details can be found here, http://drupal.org/node/207036