Install WordPress files and blog in different directories

WordPress has a number of files and directories it requires to operate. Previously, all these files and directories and your blog home page (index.php) had to be in the same directory. Now with 1.2, you can have your blog index in a different directory than your WordPress files with no problems, and here we explain how.

We're going to assume two things:

  1. You've already installed WordPress at http://example.com/wordpress/
  2. You want your blog home page to be http://example.com/

Without Further Ado

  1. Go to your Options page. It should say your WordPress address and Blog address are the same. Change your Blog address to be http://example.com
  2. Copy the index.php file from the wordpress directory into the root of your site.
  3. Now open up index.php and change the line that says require('./wp-blog-header.php'); to be require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');
  4. Open up wp-config-sample.php and fill in your database details. Save and rename the file to wp-config.php.
  5. Finally if you're using the mod_rewrite option for your blog URIs you'll need to go to Options › Permalinks to get the new rewrite rules and copy those to a .htaccess file at the root of your site.

Caveats

The only catch is the "Edit this" links will no longer appear by every entry and comment if you're using this option. This is a limitation of how we're setting cookies, and this may be fixed in the future.