Procedure For Changing The Directory Of A Wordpress Blog

1st February 2008 - 3 minutes read time

For many sites the blog is only part of the site, not the main reason for the site existing. In these cases the blog is kept in the directory /blog or similar. Occasionally (for what ever reason) it might be necessary to change the directory. To that end here is a small walk through of the steps you need to take in order to do this.

  1. Find out what the new directory should be.
  2. Create a RewriteRule on the root directory of the site, but leave it commented. This is to redirect anything going to the old blog directory to the new blog directory using a 301. You can test that this works by swapping the words around so that when you type in the new directory name it should take you to the old directory name. The RewriteRule should look something like this:
    RewriteRule ^(.*)blog(.*)$ http://www.example.co.uk/new-blog/ [R=301,L]
  3. Alter the .htaccess file in the blog directory to have the details of the new directory rather than the old.
  4. Open the admin section of the blog and go into the main options page.
  5. Alter the Wordpress options to point to the new directory.
  6. Download the template files and do a global find/replace to swap any references to the old directory to the new one.
  7. Alter the live directory of the blog to be the chosen directory name.
  8. Quickly upload the changed files.
  9. Rebuild any files that are created by plugins, for example, this might be a sitemap.xml file.
  10. Test test test!
WordPress

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
CAPTCHA
4 + 5 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Related Content

Logging Errors In WordPress

21st June 2011

To debug WordPress many sites will tell you to add the WP_DEBUG setting on its own to your wp-config.php file, but this can be quite harmful as many server configurations will start showing PHP errors and warning messages on your site pages.

Read more

The Correct Way To Load A Template File In WordPress

18th December 2010

Since WordPress 3.0 there has been a funcion called get_template_part(), which has been used quite a bit in the new Twenty Ten default WordPress theme. This is an evolution of the usual way to include parts of themes by using functions like get_header() to include the header.php file.

Read more

Some Essential WordPress Plugins

28th October 2010

I know what you are thinking, but this isn't just another WordPress plugin blog post. I am asked every few weeks what WordPress plugins I would recommend, and I always end up giving a disjointed list of some from the top of my head.

Read more

WordCampUK 2010: A Review

21st July 2010

WordCampUK is an informal 2 day conference and barcamp that centers around using, working with and developing in WordPress. This year's WordCampUK was held in Manchester and so being local I could hardly miss the opportunity to attend. It was a great event, with great talks and lots of friendly people who were really enthusiastic about WordPress.

Read more

Custom Post Types In WordPress 3.0

12th July 2010

This article relates to WordPress 3.0. Much of the code posted here won't work on previous versions and some of the information may change in newer versions.

WordPress already comes with five different content types built into the system.

Posts

Read more