Can't change from temporary to correct URL

  • Resolved Mark Gordon

    (@mark-gordon)


    11 years, 2 months ago

    I’m a complete novice at all this web design stuff, and I think I made a mistake when installing WordPress on Blue Host. During the process, I got a page that said, ‘Oops, your domain is not currently pointing to your host, so we will use your temporary domain’. Not being sure what that meant, I clicked OK to continue.

    Turns out it’s because I already have the domain name I wanted to use, with another registrar. Going by that registrar’s instructions, I don’t have to transfer the domain name to Blue Host, I can simply do a thing with the ‘nameservers’ for that domain name at their end, which I have done. The nameservers are now: ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com. (This was about 36 hours ago).

    However, I still have a problem with my WordPress site. In the settings/general page, my ‘WordPress address (URL)’ is BlueHostIPaddress/~my temporarydomainname. And so is my site address (URL).

    I want the site address to be http://www.myproperdomainaddress. But when I change it and visit the site, I get the sample page (with the temporary URL). Also, if I click on any menu pages there, I get a ‘500 internal server error’.

    So the question is, how do I fix this?

    Thanks for your time.
    MG.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • esmi

    (@esmi)

    11 years, 2 months ago

    See Changing_The_Site_URL first.

    Thread Starter Mark Gordon

    (@mark-gordon)

    11 years, 2 months ago

    Thank esmi. I’ve seen references to wp-config, but I’ve no idea where to find it.

    Thread Starter Mark Gordon

    (@mark-gordon)

    11 years, 2 months ago

    I seem to have missed an entire part of the installation process. I got an account with the web hosting company, and then clicked ‘install’ on their site. I thought what was happening was that it was installing WordPress onto my account at the host server.

    Now when reading through the help stuff here, it looks like I should have downloaded it to my computer… ?

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    11 years, 2 months ago

    The only reason to download a copy of WordPress would be to upload it again to your remote hosts’ server. So that’s not necessary now.

    Your wp-config.php file is unique to your site and is created as part of the original WordPress installation. If you ever need to access this file, it can be found in the root folder of your WP install. You would need to FTP into your site (or whatever file management application your host provides), locate the file & download it to your computer for editing in a plain text editor (such as Notepad). When the edits were complete, the amended file would then be re-uploaded to the remote server.

    That said, I personally would not recommend using the wp-config.php method for changing your site urls. Far better to use Method 2 (the functions.php file of your current theme). Again, you would need to FTP, locate the file inside wp-content/themes/your_current_theme_folder. download it, edit it in a plain text editor, then upload the amended file to the remote server.

    Thread Starter Mark Gordon

    (@mark-gordon)

    11 years, 2 months ago

    Just to say that, as I had not developed my website at all at this point, there was nothing for me to lose by just reinstalling WordPress directly, using my web hosts’ ‘one-click- method.

    By this time, the domain name pointing was sorted (see my original post), and so I was able to select my preferred URL right from the start.

    thanks for your help anyway esmi. It’s all good for the learning curve!

    MG.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘Can't change from temporary to correct URL’ is closed to new replies.