NOTE: this post is about changing the address of your blog while staying at the same webhosting account. If you are trying to move your blog to a new webhosting account, these directions won't work, you need to read this.
For simplicities sake, let's break this section into 4 different kinds of name changes:
1. Changing the name of the Wordpress installation folder (eg. www.my-domain.com/wordpress to www.my-domain.com/blog)
2. Moving your blog from a directory to your main domain (eg. www.my-domain.com/blog to www.my-domain.com)
3. Moving your blog from your main domain to a directory (eg. www.my-domain.com to www.my-domain.com/blog)
4. Switching your blog to a new domain name (eg. www.my-old-domain.com/blog to www.my-new-domain.com/blog, or www.my-old-domain.com to www.my-new-domain.com)
Select from the dropdown menu below to view the full tutorial for each circumstance.
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Changing the name of the WordPress installation folder
Very often, we get emails from people who installed their blog at some address, like www.my-domain.com/wordpress and they want to change it to www.my-domain.com/blog.
To make this sort of change you have to do it in three steps, or it won't work.
First, go into your blog's admin area, and go to "Settings" > "General". Then change the WordPress Address and Blog Address fields to be what you want them to be, shown below:
change these two fields to your desired address
After you've changed these, click "save changes" on the bottom of that page. Doing so will kick you out of your WordPress admin area and give you an error message. That's ok, don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen.
Next, use your FTP program or a web based file manager to then RENAME the folder "wordpress" to "blog" (that's the change for this example, you might be changing yours from something else to something else).
Your blog will now show up under your new address, and you can login at the new address.
Moving your blog from a directory to your main domain
If you're wanting to change your blog address from www.my-domain.com/blog to just www.my-domain.com, start by logging into your blog's admin area, and go to "Settings" > "General". Then change the WordPress Address and Blog Address fields to be what you want them to be, shown below:
After you've changed these, click "save changes" on the bottom of that page. Doing so will kick you out of your WordPress admin area and give you an error message. That's ok, don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen.
Then, instead of renaming the folder, you need to use FTP to get into the blog installation folder (in our example this folder would be called "blog") and then move all the contents of that folder (not the folder itself, all the contents) into the folder that contained your blog's folder. So, if your "blog" folder was within a folder called "public_html", you would move the contents of your "blog" folder into the "public_html" folder.
Next, go to "Settings" > "Media" and make sure that the upload path is EXACTLY "wp-content/uploads", nothing less, nothing more. Save changes.
Moving your blog from your main directory to a sub-folder
If you're wanting to change your blog address from www.my-domain.com to www.my-domain.com/blog, start by logging into your blog's admin area, and go to "Settings" > "General". Then change the WordPress Address and Blog Address fields to be what you want them to be, shown below:
After you've changed these, click "save changes" on the bottom of that page. Doing so will kick you out of your WordPress admin area and give you an error message. That's ok, don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen.
Then, instead of renaming the folder, you need to use FTP to get into the main directory of your domain. In most cases, this will be your whatever your hosting company uses as the root directory of your hosting account ("public_html" and "html", are common folder names used for these areas. You may have to contact your webhost if you can't figure this out). Within that directory, you need to create a new directory (sometimes referred to as a folder), named what you want your blog's address to be. So if you created a new directory named "blog", your blog's address would be "http://www.my-domain.com/blog". Finally, move all of your Wordpress files and folders (shown below) into this new directory.
Now you should be able to log back into your blog. Login, and then go to "Settings" > "Media" and make sure that the upload path is EXACTLY "wp-content/uploads", nothing less, nothing more. Save changes.
Changing the primary domain name associated with your blog
Say your blog exists at "my-stupid-old-domain.com" or "my-stupid-old-domain.com/blog", and you are wanting to change it to "awesome-new-domain.com" or "awesome-new-domain.com/blog". Much of this kind of change happens outside of ProPhoto and Wordpress.
Step 1: You need to purchase your new domain name. You can usually do this through your webhosting company.
Step 2: You need to point your new domain at your webhosting account by adding your webhost's Nameserver information to your new domain name. If you purchased your domain name through your webhosting company (recommended), this is probably already done for you. (If you get stuck at all here, contact your webhosting company and they should be able to help you out).
Step 3: You need to add this domain name onto your hosting account as a "parked domain" or an "add-on domain". This terminology varies from company to company, but here is how it works with Bluehost and Bludomain:
"parked domain" (most common choice) - This option will point your new domain ("awesome-new-domain.com") at the same web space as your primary domain ("my-stupid-old-domain.com"). After setting it up this way, you should be able to view your blog by going to both the old and new addresses.
"add-on domain" - This option allows you point your new domain ("awesome-new-domain.com") at a specific directory on your server. You would want to use this option if you are managing multiple domains and are replacing one other than your primary domain.
(This is another area that you will need to contact your webhosting company about if you get stuck, as this is really their arena.)
Step 4: Login to your blog and go to "Settings" > "General". Change both addresses here to your new domain name. Then go to "Appearance" > "P3 Customize" > "Settings" > "Blog settings" > "Blog path fixer" and enter your old blog address.
Change this...
...and then add this.
Step 5: Now your blog officially "lives" at your new domain name. One last item of business is that your old domain is still pointing to your blog as well, which means that both are getting indexed by search engines. This is generally not a good approach to SEO, so you will want to set up a 301 (permanent) redirect on your old domain, forwarding it to your new domain. A normal redirect will send any link from your old domain to the root of your new domain ("my-stupid-old-domain.com/blog/weddings/mary-and-joseph" would be redirected to "awesome-new-domain.com"). If you can set up a "wildcard" 301 redirect, this will send links to your old domain to the equivalent address on your new domain ("my-stupid-old-domain.com/blog/weddings/mary-and-joseph" would be redirected to "awesome-new-domain.com/blog/weddings/mary-and-joseph"). Redirects are again managed via your webhosting account, so you can contact your webhost customer support for help setting this up.
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