When transferring a WordPress site from a test environment or to a new directory, it is vital that you have a plan of action to ensure the move goes as efficiently as possible. On many WordPress sites there will be various internal links to pages and images that will need to be edited. If you are transferring quite a large site this can be quite a complicated and time intensive activity.

Luckily there are various free plugins available to do this job for us! We’re going to make use of the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin. This will search within all posts and pages and alter all links which are pointing to the wrong place.

Listed below are basic steps on how to install and make use of the plugin. Just follow these and your URLs will be changed to your new WordPress website.

• From WordPress Dashboard navigate to the plugins page and click the add new button at the top of the page. Search for “Velvet Blues Update URLs” and install the plugin.
• Once the plugin is installed click the link to activate the plugin.
• Once activated you will now have a new link in your settings menu called update URLs. Click this link to open the plugin.
• You will see 2 boxes at the bottom of the page titled old URL and new URL. Input your old URL – this is the URL where the site was previously located. i.e., if you were on your-old-domain.com and your moving to your-new-domain.com – then enter in your-old-doman.com (like in the screenshot below)
• In the box labelled new URL, input your new URL – i.e., my-new-domain.com
• Click Update URLs

That’s it!  Go to your browser, refresh your website, and check your pages and posts.  All of your links should now have been updated.  Remember though, it does not update hard-coded URLs in themes and widgets. You will still need to update these manually! But it still saved a great amount of time.

Guest post written by Helen Clough of Integral IT – a Leeds based IT Support  Company.