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How to Change a WordPress Multisite Primary Domain

 

Note: As this requires custom configuration regarding coding on your WordPress files, this falls outside the scope of support offered by HostGator. This article is for informational purposes only.

If you want to change the primary domain of your WordPress multisite installation, there are 5 values to change. There is no need to perform a database dump. This is actually frowned upon, as WordPress stores serialized data in the database, and altering it can cause corruption.

Note: It is assumed that your table prefix is “wp_”. If you’re using a different table prefix, replace “wp_” in the following table names with your prefix.

Here is a list of the 5 main tables and options that need to be changed:

  1. wp_options
    Select the options table and look for the entries named “siteurl” and “home”
  2. wp_site
  3. wp_sitemeta:
    Select the option named "siteurl"
  4. wp_blogs:
    Select any entries in the "domains" column that have the old domain name.
  5. wp_#options
    Each sub-site will have sets of tables that correspond to the blog_id in the wp_blogs table. You need to go to the wp#_options table, where # corresponds to the blog_id, and update the "siteurl" and "home" settings in that table.
WordPress has different rules for different fields. The wp_site and wp_blogs tables can NOT have http:// or a trailing slash at the end of the domain name, whereas in the wp_options table, it is required to have the http:// at the beginning. In the wp_sitemeta table it is required to have http:// at the beginning and a trailing slash at the end.

Be sure to comment out any pre-defined constants in your wp-config.php file, as they will override settings in the database. Constants referring to your URL resemble the following lines of code:

define( 'WP_HOME', 'http://example.com' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.com' );

In most cases you will need to update an entry in your wp-config.php file. The following code provides a common configuration example:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'old.siteurl.com' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

On the line that has “define(‘DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE’,'old.siteurl.com’);”
You will replace “old.siteurl.com” with your domain. So for example:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'newdomain.com' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );