http://wordpress.org/plugins/velvet-blues-update-urls/ is your friend.
Once you’ve gone live, use this plugin to update all the URLs across your WordPress site. You may need to run it more than once.
Here is a blog I wrote all about your issue (because I’ve seen it so many times). It’s a bit lengthy, but that’s because it has a lot of detailed info on how (and why) things are done. When you strip it down to it’s basics, it’s super easy and only a few steps.
http://www.designprinciples.com/how-to-migrate-a-wordpress-installation-to-another-domain/
Velvet Blues is a great plugin for simple sites, but it doesn’t do everything.
I should have mentioned in my original post that I am not coming from a previous WordPress install. None of my content will need to be transferred over from the previous static site.
Does this change things? Would the Velvet Blues plugin still be the way to go? Thanks.
My question is, when I go live with this site, and my URL becomes http://temp-site.com, will I run into issues?
That depends upon what you intend to do when your site goes live. Will you be moving the site?
We have setup the new WordPress install on Bluehost. The old site and hosting will not be needed. Once the WordPress website is completed and ready to go live I will be changing the DNS entries of the domain to point to the new Bluehost servers.
My concern is I’ve been uploading WordPress files to the temporary URL given to me and when I go live, I’m not sure what issues I’ll run into.
Since the site is physically staying put and only the domain name is changing, you should be able to get away with just Changing_The_Site_URL. Remember to wait until the DN changes have fully propagated before doing this.
The domain name is not changing. I’m switching hosts from a previous host, with a static website, to Bluehost with a WordPress install.
The domain name IS changing… you are changing the name from http://12.345.678.999/~tempsite to your current domain name, so you’ll need to do something. The article I sent you shows ALL steps… if you aren’t physically moving files, then skip the steps that require you to copy/paste your website and database and just go down to “STOP RIGHT THERE!!!”
Also, you can do these steps right before you pull the switch on DNS.
@esmi… out of curiosity, isn’t it better to change the values in the database to reflect the correct domain rather than using PHP define variables? Isn’t that extra overhead on the server?
