Remapping absolute URLs from other domains and from test domain

Absolute or relative URLs are one of those eternal debates, but what you have to know in WordPress context is that it has strong affinity for absolute links. The logic is that changing absolute links in general is easier than changing level of relative links when necessary.

The second point you need to know is that WordPress stores a lot of stuff in serialized representation. Running simple string replacement on database or database dump is likely to break data.

So what you need is specialized serialize–aware search/replace tool. There are quite a few solutions around, standalone or as functions of backup plugins. I am partial to Search-Replace-DB personally.

Related Posts:

  1. Do you have any effective strategies for launching a v2 of a WP site?
  2. Change site url when moving site to another url?
  3. Migration issue – blog home page is blank
  4. Recover WordPress blog from an inactive domain name
  5. Is it possible just by using wp-cli to migrate one multisite instance to single site?
  6. How to transfer changes from test environment to live site?
  7. References to other site everywhere in WordPress site
  8. Plugins to clone wordpress site and move to another url
  9. 500 Internal Server Error after attempting to switch from subdirectory to addon domain
  10. Export and overwrite pages on import?
  11. How to upload local changes to a live server without overriding new posts/pages?
  12. How can I assign post a specific ID on creation?
  13. Error establishing a database connection After Copy localhost wordpress site (with site url directly to hosting server’s url before copy)
  14. How to migrate from wordpress.com to self-hosted wordpress
  15. Migrating my existing WP site to localhost
  16. Will post id change when migrating to new site?
  17. Setting up WordPress playground and deploying to production server?
  18. Critical Site Health Issue after WordPress Migration
  19. Error migrating from live website to localhost
  20. Copying wordpress to another server breaks it on original server
  21. Why isn’t my imported database showing up? install.php pops up and adds new tables to the database
  22. Can I setup WordPress in a subdirectory and then point my URL to the subdirectory when I’m ready to go live?
  23. call_user_func_array() errors after migrating site with InstantWP
  24. how do i find out why links point to my old domain
  25. We have a static Hugo website and we want to migrate it to WordPress
  26. How do I force password reset even with wrong password entered?
  27. How can I migrate (export and import) wordpress users without loosing their password?
  28. Tags not importing when using WordPress import system
  29. Move from Subdomain to Root
  30. migrating local dev site to live site with no downtime
  31. preventing the duplicate wp_insert_post
  32. Is there a way to migrate via wordpress dashboard?
  33. Trying to move an Expression Engine site to WordPress, but not having luck with content
  34. Migrate ProcessWire to WordPress
  35. Preserve password hashes when migrating to another server
  36. Cannot complete migration on LAMP
  37. Nginx mamp pro5 migration home page works all other do not
  38. migrating my wordpress site
  39. Moving WordPress page to a new domain
  40. Is it possible to transfer my local installation entirely to the server?
  41. The easiest way to migrate a wordpress website across servers
  42. Moving my newly made site from subdirectory
  43. What is the difference between wp-admin>Export>All content and MySql dump and import
  44. Clean private data (passwords, ftp, database) before zipping my site and SQL and give it to other person
  45. how to update link on live site from test site
  46. Migrating to local server
  47. wordpress changing host breaks image links
  48. Tried to move blogs to a new server – “white screen of death”
  49. Images in the post still pointing to older domain after domain change
  50. Blank screen after moving WordPress to new server with same domain name
  51. I changed my domain name and REST API stopped working
  52. Getting HTTP error 500 after migrating a website
  53. migration wordpress to local machine does not work with all broken URLs except frontpage
  54. Uncaught Error: Class ‘Redis’ errors on a site I’ve transfered to new hosting
  55. WordPress migration to new domain and environment with only zip file
  56. Migrating WP website from local host
  57. Migrate posts and photos from a blog to another
  58. Migrating stats from WordPress.com blog to self-hosted WordPress.org blog
  59. Transfer WordPress
  60. Server ip to Domain
  61. Deploying from local to dev: pages do not work
  62. Migrate VB.net website to wordpress website
  63. How do you do your big exports / imports?
  64. Import from Windows to Linux
  65. Wrong URL to CSS and JS after change domain
  66. Migration from environment to master WordPress
  67. How to recover wordpress website moved from a PC to another
  68. Making a development site live, on Amazon EC2
  69. What happens if I replace the files of a WordPress site with another WordPress site?
  70. How I shift me website from WordPress managed to linux hosting?
  71. Update around 200,000 posts
  72. Move wordpress files from one pc to another pc contents showing error
  73. Migrating a whole website to WordPress
  74. Migration from XAMPP in windows to MAMP in Mac
  75. Internal server error
  76. Redirects and Subdirectory migration to Root Directory
  77. Moving WordPress site from local PC to local Mac
  78. How to transfer /wordpress folder from one Mac to another
  79. How to move a locally built wordpress website to live server using wordpress importer
  80. Copy template with plugins to another hosting provider
  81. WordPress giving gibberish and wp-admin gives HTTP 500 error
  82. Moved wordpress dashboard still pointing to testing server
  83. Migrating a WordPress site has broken UTF8 encoding
  84. Migration to staging server, pages from other site loading in
  85. How to make Youtube short code transfer
  86. Error after moving wordpress blog
  87. Source code get entity escaped after migrating
  88. Fast way to copy a Blog x to another domain/server without deleting it
  89. how to move a wordpress blog to my static site
  90. How to migrate, does WordPress hardcode or shortcode image URLs?
  91. Migrating domain name from old WP host to new (which uses vhosts)
  92. Migrated from localhost to server and cannot get custom_fields content anymore
  93. Can’t restore my wordpress site from zip back up file
  94. ColdFusion site to WordPress?
  95. How do I set up a test environment in a sub-folder?
  96. Change a web programmed in ASP.net to WordPress from scratch in the same Hosting
  97. How to migrate a local WP installation onto Digital Ocean
  98. Changing a domain for a current WP site without having it go inactive
  99. Pages do not load after migration to new server
  100. wp-admin keeps forwarding me to an old url