When Can You Change The WordPress URL And Site Address?
If you have recently acquired a new website or you’ve added an extra site, you probably want to know when it is okay to change the WordPress URL and site address in the settings area before you go live. I had the same question. I didn’t look at the settings and didn’t realise the domain name wasn’t the one I wanted. It wasn’t live yet, and the domain I had hadn’t yet been assigned to the website. So what do you do first?
WordPress.org URL change – What not to do?
Do not just change it. Your site will disappear. I always say, if you’re not sure about anything, don’t do it! Follow the steps below before you do anything else.
How to change your WordPress URL settings before your site goes live
Step 1:
Before you launch your wordpress site to the world, the first step should be to make sure the right domain is assigned to your wordpress URL.
For example the domain you want is : joeblogs.com but your temporary domain might look like this >> cosmictouchblog/joeblogs
You will need to assign the main domain to the temporary site.
While this might seem like a straightforward task, it can take a few hours or several days for your domain name to resolve to its permanent wordpress address. It’s important that you are patient as your website won’t show up until the wordpress domain is assigned, so be sure not to rush!
Step 2:
When completed, then you can update the WordPress URL and site address in settings area of WordPress.
Step 3:
Make the site live by launching site in the My Sites area under settings or you can do this from your dashboard in the Bluehost tab if you have Bluehost as your host or in the setting area at the top of the page.
Step 4:
If you have interlinked pages/posts to each other (which is great for SEO), check the links as they may be still under the old temporary domain and will need changing.
OTHER TIPS
Make sure your permalink structure has the right settings. Go to settings >> Permalinks and under Permalink structure click on the post name. This makes links easy to understand, and can help your posts rank higher in search engines.