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Switching WordPress Blog URL to subdomain

July 24, 2009 By

(Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes)

So you want to switch your blog to a subdomain, and you want everything to work.

Yeah, right!

Ok, it’s not that difficult, but it is a little bit picky. You will need to pay attention and be careful.

As usual, the first thing to do is back up everything:

  1. Database backup, and
  2. WordPress installation backup.

We want to use the subdomain http://blog.mydomain.com/ mapped to http://mydomain.com/wpblog. The benefits of this are:

  1. Looks more professional.
  2. Helps shroud the site structure from bonehead script kiddies.

A real professional, thoroughly malicious hacker probably won’t be fooled. Then again, the pro isn’t likely going to smash your site either by accident or for fun. He wants to use your bandwidth anonymously, not get you kicked off the host.

The next thing to do is put on some decent music. At the moment, I’m in the mood for Norman Fairbanks “7 Days Microsleep,” billed as the first purely Tenori-On album released. If you aren’t familiar with the Tenori-On, Little Boots will demonstrate it’s capability on a cover of Hot Chip’s “Ready for the Floor.” You can’t buy this album. You have to download it from One American Second. Make sure to leave a tip!

Now get a notebook. A paper notebook, with pen or pencil. You can always punch your notes into your computer later; this is one of the few times I believe paper and pen are best. As you follow the procedure, write down exactly what you do and how you do it. This way if you have to backtrack, it will be much easier.

Log on to your hosting provider. I’m at Bluehost; I’ll be using their cPanel interface.

  1. Open your FTP client.
  2. Create subdirecory (wpblog); move all WordPress files there
  3. Log in to cPanel.
  4. Create subdomain using cPanel tools: blog.mydomain.com -> mydomain.com/wpblog
  5. Go into phpmyadmin, find the database, click on that, click on wp_options table, click on “Browse”, fix the paths field: mydomain.com -> blog.mydomain.com
  6. Go into wp-admin page, fix paths: mydomain.com -> blog.mydomain.com
  7. Optional Add the redirect using cPanel: mydomain.com -> blog.mydomain.com

That’s the fast and dirty, and it worked fine for me.

If you have enough traffic that you want to preserve your SERPs, you will need to add appropriate 301 redirections. I recommend using John Godley’s Redirection plugin for this chore, which makes it much easier.

Let me know if you have any trouble with this procedure. If the mere thought of this gives you the willies, drop me a line and we’ll talk about it.

Filed Under: Website Maintenance Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using WordPress GoCodes Plugin for Simple Redirection

June 26, 2009 By

(Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes)

Have you ever been just groovin’ away on some really cool music you found, say a CD you haven’t heard by a favorite group, then gone and read a bunch of downer reviews?

That just happened to me.

I’m a serious downtempo fan, and I just got up from a nap, where I was listening to Thievery Corporation’s “Abductions and Reconstructions.” I was serious afternoon whipped. You know, when you’re laying on the couch and you know you need to get up, but you’re whole body is paralyzed. That kind of whipped. So this downtempo album was perfect. Made me feel like I was floating.

Then I go read a bunch of reviews on Amazon: “Worst Thievery Corporation ever.” Yeah, whatever. I mean come on, they remixed Pizzicato Five’s “Porno 3003!” Awesome! Like I said, if it’s downtempo, I’m probably going to like it. If you like downtempo, you’ll probably like it too.

Anyway, I’m using a sweet WordPress plugin GoCodes to keep track of how many times files have been downloaded from Website In A Weekend. Using a redirecting technique such as GoCodes benefits you in several ways:

  1. Gocodes enable short, descriptive URLs for pages that may change or move, such as file download locations. For example, I moved the location of a file download. Since I had used Gocodes as the link, I didn’t have to change any links in any of my blog posts, because none of the them broke. Instead, I simply changed the target for the gocode
  2. Affiliate links come in a strange and wonderful variety of forms, most of which are butt-ugly. Using a Gocode, affiliate link ugliness can be hidden behind a nice, action-oriented URL. For example, instead of aweber.com/?id=331138, I have /go/aweber. Some people recommend hiding affiliate links, but that only works when readers are ignorant. Smart bears know whenever they see a URL like “I/recommend/product,” that’s an affiliate link.
  3. Gocodes can bring some harmony to your permalink situation. No need to type out really long URLs, just give the gocoded URL instead. URL shorteners like TinyURL will do this same task, but you don’t control over the form or the management of the URL. The Gocode can be named to provide a little extra SEO advantage.
  4. Last but not least, you can track statistics for each Gocode redirection.

Gocodes plugin is really simple and easy to use. If you aren’t familiar with redirects, Gocodes is a perfect introduction. In a future article, I’ll discuss John Godley’s Redirection plugin, which can be used for the same purpose, but has many more features and is more complicated to learn.

Filed Under: Making Money Tagged With: , ,
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