Installing a parallel WordPress site on Bluehost

Resolved VitualBob
(@vitualbob)

1 year, 4 months ago

I’m currently running a mature Concrete5 site on the root of my Bluehost account, but ultimately I want to migrate the site to WordPress to hand over to someone else. I did this years ago on another Bluehost account since deleted but I’m a bit rusty on the how to so hopefully someone familiar with Bluehost can point me in the right direction.

What’s the cleanest way to set up a new site on an existing server if the old site files and folders are spread out on the root. Is it just a new directory on root? I want the old site to remain live until its time to migrate.

I gather the scripted WP installs just install the site on root, so a manual install is the only way.

I want to create a test site URL such as wptest.mysite.com that points the new installation. Where do I do that?

After test and troubleshoot the domain name will point to the new site.

I believe you can run multiple sites on bluehost, but do they all work off the web root?

Thanks

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

George Appiah
(@gappiah)

1 year, 4 months ago

I gather the scripted WP installs just install the site on root, so a manual install is the only way.

I’m not sure what you mean by “scripted WP install”. If it’s something provided by your host, then you’ll need to contact them for the final word.

For manual installation, the WordPress installer will install WordPress into whatever path or folder the installer is called from (ie the folder containing the WordPress files). So if you have your WordPress files in the root, then the WordPress site address will be the root domain. If you have your WordPress files at DocumentRoot/wordpress, then your WordPress site address will be example.com/wordpress/.

I want to create a test site URL such as wptest.mysite.com that points the new installation. Where do I do that?

Create the sub-domain in your Bluehost account (if allowed, I have no idea what Bluehost offers). Then upload the WordPress files into the sub-domain’s DocumentRoot. (Alternatively, check to see if Bluehost has an auto-installer that CAN install WordPress automatically into the sub-domain you created for you).

What’s the cleanest way to set up a new site on an existing server if the old site files and folders are spread out on the root. Is it just a new directory on root? I want the old site to remain live until its time to migrate.

1) Install your WordPress site into any sub-domain or sub-directory of your choosing. You could even do this offline on your local computer.

2) Build your new WordPress site to your heart’s desire (online or offline).

3) When you’re done with the site, backup your old Concrete5 site, and change the WordPress site URL from the sub-domain/sub-directory to the root domain. (If you built the site offline, you’d first install a fresh WordPress site in the root, and then use a plugin to transfer your offline site online.)

Note that you can opt to MOVE all the WordPress files to the root, or keep them in the subfolder, but change the site address to the root domain. See Giving WordPress its Own Directory.

Thread Starter VitualBob
(@vitualbob)

1 year, 4 months ago

Thanks @gappiah – I couldn’t recall the terminology and its coming back to me now. A quick search and I see that all separate domains related to a single Bluehost account are housed in separate directories on the document root. (I don’t know why I didn’t install CC5 in its own directory so it was a bit cleaner, as I did with another account). I can only use the sub-domain option as I don’t have or need a separate domain for this task.

The WordPress manual install should be straight forward and thanks for the summary. I should be good to go now.

For anyone else interested in the multiple domain hosting:
Multiple domains in Bluehost are called Addon Domains and they are actually sub-domains housed in separate directories that are managed by URL pointers by the server. So if the base account is abc.com and you have the 123.com domain, any or all of the following can be used, or the first two masked so that only 123.com is accessible by a site visitor.

• abc.com/123
• 123.abc.com
• 123.com

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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