I need to be able to move wordpress sites to new domains. This is not really for SEO purposes just for something else that I'm doing. I'm familiar with moving my wordpress files to a new host, and importing the database. I do this all the time manually with no problems. But I've been searching and posting everywhere in forums and can't find the answer to this simple question. Is there a way to move your wordpress site onto a new domain and have it appear exactly as the old site, but with all of the images hosted on the new domain, and links to inner pages on the new domain? (Also: have your domain.com/wp-admin link take you to login to the new site, not the old one) In the past I have moved some sites to new domains but I always have problems that I can't completely fix- the image URLs are still hosted on the old domain, all of the inner page links are pointing to the old domain, the wp-admin login points to the old domain, etc. I've seen people say "just buy BackupBuddy" and I am definitely willing to buy something to help me do this quickly on a lot of sites, but i just don't see what backup buddy actually does for this particular purpose- it basically just downloads your database and wordpress files, as you can do manually. One thing I have tried is going through the database file and replacing the old domain name with the new one and then uploading the database file to the new site- but that doesn't really work for some reason and still doesn't do what I want. I think getting the images to be hosted on the new site may be the hardest part of this. I'm sure somebody knows the answer to this.
If site is not too big, export xml database from current wordpress site and then import the xml file to new site. Move/copy upload folder to new domain.
If changing domains go into phpmyadmin when you move it and change the base url and the home link in the database. Its page one and page 2 of the database. That is typically how I do it without issue. Nigel
Download the Wordpress plug-in called "WP Migrate DB." It allows you to put the URL of the new domain name. Then you export the database, import it onto your new database, and all of the images/links/etc. will be changed to reflect the new domain. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:
Instead of buying backup buddy, use Xcloner it's free and can transfer the files via FTP rather than downloading and uploading which can take some time on large sites.
BackupBuddy is actually the best one to do the job for you here. The BackupBuddy Plugin will actually do everything you are talking about here. It will basically Clone the blog to any other new domain you want. Everything will be transferred and set up on the new domain/blog. My best suggestion would be to us the BackupBuddy Plugin - it is the best out there to do this job. Hope this helps! Cheers!
I found this simple article for change or updating the url hope you will find it interesting : http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/change-url.htm