Changing domain names

If you want to change your website domain name, this operation will require some knowledge in the domain and hosting administration.

In this article, we will assume that you are already familiar with managing domains. If you are not that familiar, we would recommend requesting help from specialized parties (hosting provider or domain provider support team).

Before proceeding, make sure to do a full website backup (files and database) so you could revert at any point if something goes wrong.

Changing a website’s domain is a process that will require completing several steps that are listed below:

Point your hosting account to the new domain via DNS records.
Reconfigure the WordPress website database and replace all occurrences of the old domain with the new one. While the most popular method of doing this is via the phpMyAdmin interface, another easier method would be to use a separate PHP script specialized for this: https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
Once the database has been updated, you will have to wait sometime for the new nameservers to propagate. Make sure to also clear your browser and server caches, which might speed up the propagation process.

That’s it! If you completed all of the steps above, your website should be available under the new domain of your choice.