Moving a WordPress site out of the hosting root

A WordPress install sitting in the account root was hijacking every other domain on the hosting account. I moved it into a subdirectory without breaking it.

The objective

The client had installed WordPress straight into the root folder of their hosting account. That meant every other domain pointed at the account served the same WordPress site, and the splash page they actually wanted at the root never showed up.

They'd already tried to move it themselves using instructions off the internet, the site broke, and they put it back. Moving WordPress isn't just shifting files around. The site URL lives in the database, and the rewrite rules and any absolute paths have to travel with it.

What I did

I moved the installation into a subdirectory and updated the stored site and home URLs to match.

I rewrote the rules at the root so the right site loads there and the other domains stop resolving to it.

Then I went through the usual casualties of a move like this, mostly permalinks and media URLs, to make sure nothing had quietly broken.

This was my second job for this client. Earlier the same year I'd taken their phpBB board from 3.0 to 3.2.

The result

The site runs from its subdirectory, the other domains serve what they're meant to, and nothing was lost on the way across.