Change your WordPress site URL safely

Step 1: Know the two settings

WordPress stores its address twice, in the options table: home (the Site Address, what visitors type) and siteurl (the WordPress Address, where its files live). For most sites they are identical. Write them without a trailing slash.

Step 2: Change them in the dashboard if you can

Settings → General. Saving logs you out, because your login cookie belongs to the old address; log in again at the new one. If the fields are greyed out, they are fixed in wp-config.php and must be changed there.

Step 3: Or change them from outside WordPress

If you are locked out, either define the addresses in wp-config.php or update the options with WP-CLI. Constants in wp-config.php override the database, so remove them later if you want the dashboard fields back.

define( 'WP_HOME', 'https://newdomain.com' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://newdomain.com' );

# or
wp option update home 'https://newdomain.com'
wp option update siteurl 'https://newdomain.com'

Step 4: Replace the old address in the content

Links and image URLs in posts, widgets and theme settings still use the old domain. Do not run a plain SQL REPLACE: WordPress stores some settings as serialised PHP, which records each string's length, and changing the text without the length corrupts them. WP-CLI's search-replace handles this. Skip the guid column — post GUIDs are identifiers and should not change.

wp search-replace 'https://olddomain.com' 'https://newdomain.com' --skip-columns=guid --dry-run
wp search-replace 'https://olddomain.com' 'https://newdomain.com' --skip-columns=guid

Step 5: Flush what is cached

Re-save Settings → Permalinks, then purge the page cache and any CDN. Cached pages still contain the old links.

Step 6: Redirect the old domain permanently

Keep the old domain pointing at the server and send every path to the same path on the new one with a 301. If the old domain was in Google Search Console, use its Change of Address tool as well.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?olddomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]