Changing domain after installation

[journeytosilius]

Hi, I am using debops-wordpress and everything is fine so far, but I am using a temporary domain to develop the site only to switch to the production domain once it is ready for production. What would be the proper approach to do this ?

[carlalexander]

Good question! I think there are a few ways to do. It also depends on whether you're using Let's Encrypt or not.

But, from a professional perspective, I view the temporary site as a staging environment. So, once it's ready, I'd create a new server with the production domain. I'd then migrate the database (replacing the old domain in the process) and files over.

[drybjed]

To supplement this from the DebOps side of things - the project isn't designed with the ability to change the host's domain at will. What you want to do is setup a new host on the required domain and apply the playbooks on it - various roles will use the detected domain in the configuration files. Changing the domain after that is theoretically possible, but things might break as a result.

[journeytosilius]

Yeah, using Let's Encrypt is a must, so I guess the best way to do this is dumping files and database and then import to the new site I guess. There is a little plugin that does the domain changing very effectively so no more local scripts to achieve it. I have tested this in production and it's flawless : https://wordpress.org/plugins/automatic-domain-changer/

[carlalexander]

Did this work for you? Can we close?

[felixfrtz]

I am also interested in this, as I am in a situation where I can't change the records of the production domain to point to my dev droplet. The transfer must be seamless. @chromafunk As carl asked, did this work for you?

[AJMiller]

not to hijack this thread, but as I've used this script I've found myself caught in the same situation. If there is already an old production site, then standing up a new server with the correct production domain would mean the site going down for x period of time, then showing a default WP theme until you get the new site uploaded. It would be ideal if we could add multiple hosts to a server like:

// inventory/hosts
[debops_all_hosts]
staging.wordpress.com

[wordpress]
staging.wordpress.com
wordpress.com
www.wordpress.com

that would setup the ssh and default config under the staging url but allow nginx to listen on both staging/prod urls. There's still the matter of re-running let's encrypt once the DNS record for the prod site is pointed to the new IP address, but if that could simply occur by re-running # debops or # debops wordpress, that wouldn't be a huge issue.

[carlalexander]

I'm going to close this. Feel free to reopen if you still have the issue @chromafunk!