When Moving a WordPress Website, Update MySQL Links Plugin
Moving a WordPress website is a demanding and tedious process. After you’ve copied all of your website’s files to your new environment, you have to connect all of the database tables, fix the URLs of all of the posts, and adjust the permalinks to point to your new location. Fortunately, there are tools available to help with the majority of the work. This article will walk you through setting up a new WordPress website with almost no downtime, using a tool called MYSQL Links.
MYSQL Links
MYSQL Links is a free and open-source utility that makes it easy for anyone to update their MySQL links. The plugin allows you to update the email addresses, databases, and host names of your WordPress website’s tables without editing any HTML code. Once you’ve downloaded the plugin, you’ll want to visit the “Dashboard” section of your WordPress admin area to configure it. Here’s what you’ll need to do.
1. Log in to the WordPress admin area.
Even though you’ve already downloaded and installed MYSQL Links, you have to confirm the plugin’s settings in the WordPress admin area. The first time you log in after you’ve installed the plugin, you’ll see a screen like this:
Here you can see the admin area of your WordPress site. To the left is a navigation bar that represents your site’s menus. In the center is a textbox that will host the settings for your new MYSQL Links database. To the right is a button that will save your configuration.
Click on the “Settings” tab located in the upper left corner of the WordPress admin area. You’ll see that above the fold there are four different sections: General, Backup, Metadata and Settings.
2. Set the general options.
The General options section allows you to configure several settings that will affect all of your WordPress websites. You don’t have to change these options unless you want to update all of your websites with the same settings. Below the fold, you’ll see three different tabs that you can use to set the basic parameters for your website. You can choose from three different themes (light, dark and custom) and two different header types (fixed and scrolling). The best practice for this section is to leave the default settings and simply change the theme if you want to update your site quickly.
3. Set the database options.
The Database options section allows you to change the MySQL database settings for your WordPress site. You don’t have to change these options unless you want to update your database with different settings. Below the fold, you’ll see five different tabs that you can use to configure different aspects of your database’s settings. Make sure to consult your MySQL documentation to know which options to change and how. Remember: your database host will have specific settings that you should check before making any changes. For example, if you’re using the default configuration of Hostinger, you should ensure that “skip-name-resolve” is enabled in your DB configuration file.
4. Set the permalink options.
The Permalink options section allows you to change the default permalink settings of your WordPress site. This is a critical section of the configuration because if you don’t set a meaningful permalink structure, search engines may punish your website by ignoring your content or showing it in a less prominent position in search results. To prevent this from happening, you have to make sure that your permalink structure is easy for both humans and search engines to understand. You can use different link structures for different types of content (e.g., posts, pages, and custom posts) to create better organized URLs.
Under the fold, you’ll see six different tabs that you can use to configure unique permalink settings for each type of content on your WordPress website. Remember, these settings will only affect the links that you create after you’ve configured the plugin. If you want to set the permalink structure for all of your content to a specific value, you can use a URL such as http://yourdomain.com/?p=123 to enter the settings into the textbox above the fold.
5. Test your settings.
Once you’ve completed the settings above the fold, you can click on “Save Changes” in the upper right corner of the WordPress admin area to test your settings. If everything is configured correctly, a notice will appear on the upper right corner with a green checkmark:
If you see this notification, you can click on the green checkmark to confirm that your changes were saved correctly. You’re almost done! The only thing left to do is to click on “Logout” located at the top right corner of the screen above the fold.