Do you want to update URLs after moving your WordPress site? It can be quite painful to manually edit each post or page just to replace old URLs. In this article, we will show you how to easily update URLs when moving your WordPress site.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
When and Why Do You Need to Update URLs?
Let’s suppose you moved a WordPress site to a new domain name. You can then change the WordPress address and site URL by visiting WordPress settings page.
However, this does not change the URLs that you have previously added in your posts and pages. It also does not change the URLs of images you have added to your WordPress site.
Changing all these URLs manually can be very time consuming, and there will always be a chance that you will miss some URLs.
That’s where you’ll need this tutorial. Let’s see how to quickly and easily update URLs when moving your WordPress site.
Update URLs After Moving a WordPress Site
First make sure that you have a complete backup of your WordPress site. This will allow you to easily revert back in case something goes wrong during the update process.
Next, you need to install and activate the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Update URLs page to configure plugin settings.
Here you need to provide the old and new URLs of your website. After that you need to choose where you want the URLs to be updated.
You can update urls in posts and pages, excerpts, image attachments, custom fields, etc.
Go ahead and select each item that you want to update and then click on the ‘Update URLs Now’ button.
The plugin will find and replace all instances of old URL with your new URL.
You can now visit your website to see that all URLs are updated.
We hope this article helped you learn how to update URLs when moving your WordPress site. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.
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thank you very much,
My problem was solved.
Glad our article could be helpful
Really good help !
Glad our guide could be helpful
Thanks it saves my a lot of work.
You’re welcome, glad our recommendation could help
I installed activated, unfortunately, it failed to change the images URL. After switching my site to https, i had to change my site address to a non-www
Example : from http:www.example.com to https:example.com
SSL is properly activated, my site is up but most of the images still points to the www version of my site.
The plugin report was zero changes done for all attachment files.
Any idea or advice will be helpful
Thank you
You would want to ensure the options were checked below the url and that the url you entered was correct as well for the most common reasons
I am impressed with all the positive comments. I am planning to install and try this plugin for changing my image URLs.
One thing I want to know is that if the plugin succeeds and does what it’s supposed to do, do we need to keep the plugin installed and activated?
Once the job is done can we deactivate the plugin?
Will deactivating the plugin reverts the changes it made ???
Thank you
You can delete Velvet Blues after it has updated your URLs without them being reverted
I tried Velvet Blues Update URLs, but it doesn’t work in custom fields. Is there any other way to update custom fields?
Did you check the option for it to update custom fields? You may want to reach out to the plugin’s support if that option isn’t having it update your fields
Thanx for this article it was very helpful, I have a question though, Is there a way to automatically remove the old urls from my database ?
It would depend on what you mean, this method should handle links in posts and pages but in general, if you have your old url in plugins we do not have a recommended method at the moment.
Can the Velvet Blue plugin be used for a sub-folder change as well?
For a subdomain change, you would want to take a look at the redirection plugin in our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-get-rid-of-wordpress-from-your-wordpress-site-url/
Thanks for the reply! My question was for folders, not subdomains. Can you bulk update links from domain.com/folder-1/url-path to domain.com/folder-2/url-path?
Apologies for the confusion, you would still want to use the redirection plugin for that type of change.
Thanks for telling us about this plugin. Haven’t tried it yet, but will soon. I was working away on the subdomain we’re using to create our new site, and adding links when I suddenly thought, “Bet these links don’t get updated automatically. Do I need to record every one I’ve created so I can update it later?”
So glad to know there’s a plugin that will do most of this for us.j
Thank you,
Linda
Glad our guide could point out the plugin for you
Many thanks
But I have changed all URLs in footer by my self.
Well done, you can certainly update your links manually, the plugin is an option for those who don’t want to manually go through all of their content on their site to update the links
Worked for me, thanks bro
You’re welcome, glad our guide could help
Hi there,
I managed to update all textlinks using broken link checker. But buttons (wp bakery) are not affected. Will this plugin update the link in buttons too?
You would want to check with WPBakery to see if it currently allows this type of editing
Hey will it change all my Quicklinks in each page go my footer. I have different Quicklinks and buttons to the specific pages and all the links needs to be changed. SO will it work ???
Also my wordpress website is under wordpress folder so the link also mention the wordpress folder on the website If I will change the folder name and then put a link in
old saying “www.example.test/wordpress” and
new saying “www.newsite.com/renamefoldername”
SO will this work or do I manually have to change the link for each pages
Depending on how the quick links were created it likely will not update those but it will be able to update the folder.
This article is a blessing !!
Thank you
The same issue happened on one of my client website after migration.
when i am trying to add a new image in the slider it is not with updating the new urls & showing 404 errors.
After using the plugin Velvet Blues Update URLs the issue is resolved. Thanks for sharing the article.
Glad our article could help
Hey I’m having an issue,
Whats happened is I initially changed my site URL. Now whats happened is that whenever someone clicks on my blog name (when they see my comments on another post) they get a broken link to the old URL. If anyone knows how to fix this that would be great.
You may want to try resaving your new url and resaving your permalinks in case that was cached somewhere
Hi,
Velvet blues worked great for regular images in posts but not featured images. Do you know about a plugin that supports changing featured images URLs? I’m storing images in a different server in the new version of my site.
It should also update featured images, you may want to reach out to the plugin’s support if it is not updating properly.
Does not work for me. However, I may be trying to do something this plugin does not support – moving from non-www to www subdomain.
Hey John,
It does support that, if your URLs have www, then you can use the plugin to replace them with non-www URLs.
Hi Everyone
i want to upload my local wordpress site to online, but when i download all the files and want to change the links (localhost/websitename/ ) there is no such links available except two links. As there must be many lins to be changes bu i dont see . Why the links are missing ?
anyone knows ?
The Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin is excellent. I want to share my experience with it. After i did my URL change with it. I still see the error on opening all post. I solved it by going to “Settings > Permalinks” section and then saved my permalinks once more by clicking the “Save Changes” button. This solved my problem and will also solve yours if you still get some error.
Thanks Yogi !!
Thank you very much. this solved my problem
I am using the same domain but i have changed my hosting. After that my all images in post are not showing. How can i fix this problem.
WIll it still maintain it after updating the urls and i delete the plugin?
Yes, after you have updated URLs you can delete the plugin.
Thanks so much! Worked like a charm
Velvet blues is great, but misses one thing. Does not change URL’s in options if URL’s are there. Say for Custom CSS. Also, anyone have issues of you changing the URL’s, see changes in the DB. But when you go edit the page, they are still say http, when they should be https? Seems to only happen with image URL’s.
I used this wonderful plugin in the past, always worked fine. But this time it only changed the full URL links, not the internal links that don’t include the full URL. Any ideas on how to fix this?
I had the same issue I just changed my permalink settings to “plain” and changed back to the permalink setting I was using and somehow it works.
this worked! AWESOME! THANKS!
The plugin hasn’t been supported in over 1 year and is untested with WP version 4.9.1. Nevertheless, I gave it a try, but unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, giving a MySQL server error. So much for a once very good plugin that the developer decides to abandon!
Hi Priscilla,
We just tested the plugin and it worked as expected. Please try again and see if the error has resolved or may be the error is unrelated to the plugin.
Post update of URL, images are not showing up properly in wordpress admin site. Please comment on this and also URL update didn’t happen for images on Media folder
After migrating from local to server, I’m getting 404-File not found error. Only my Home Page is loading, rest are not working, I have changed the permalinks also! Please help…
Is there anyway I can avoid links from social media breaking once I have done a re-direct?
I’m trying to re-direct from a wordpress.com blog to a blog on a new domain on wordpress.org, however I’m concerned previous links in tweets and linkedIn posts will break….any way to avoid this?)
If i tried this but what is for seo how they upadated old link and redirect
I changed my server keeping same web URL. and properly configured.
But why my all old post r showing in google search with page not found.
What to do??
I want to merge two websites. Should we install the Velvet plugin on the old or the new site? Thanks
I use Velvet Blues with very good results. However, it is important to note that VB will not change URL in widgets or if there are URLs in your CSS code. These will need to be manually changed.
In response to ADITYA’s comment about this being a substitute for 301 redirects.
I would say that a find and replace plugin is NOT a substitute for 301 redirects. 301 redirects are still valuable from an SEO standpoint, as well as for users who may have bookmarked or are accustomed to using your old domain.
Just using this plugin would result in your users hitting an old site that is no longer being maintained or a site that’s been taken offline.
On a personal note, I definitely recommend Migrate DB Pro for this type of activity. It’s worth the money, if you’re doing local development.
Hi,
Does this plug in also work for updating links that are embedded inside tables that I created with TablePress? I also have a number of URLs as part of image descriptions for photos that I added using FooGallery, and i assume that these are stored inside the database, rather than in the HTML for the pages – is Velvet Blues able to update these as well, or do I need a different plug in for that task? My site (which I am going to move from its current directory to a subdirectory of my site that I want to use for an add-on domain) contains about 13.500 images and 500 tables, and it would be extremely tedious to check every single one for links, and then manually replace them with the new URL.
Thanks.
Hi,
I have the same problem changing domain name.
Had you learn any tip ?
Thanks
Does anyone know how to get the url’s updated that are in table press??
Cool plugin and great tutorial, I’ve just migrate my domain and I have 300 post. I searched exactly the plugin u reviewed. Thanks for your help. I didn’t needed to replace my internal link one by one.
Glad you found it helpful
Question: I updated my theme, and the blogroll is now on a secondary page, when it used to be on the homepage. So I have the same url but different path. Check it out:
Old Link (we want to maintain these):
New Link:
I tried adjusting the permalinks but its not working…yet. Any ideas?
Thanks so much!
Thanks for the wonderful tut , i usually go for backupbuddy for my migration but sometimes due to server limitations backupbuddy doesnt work . This trick comes handy everytime i manually migrate wordpress and works like a charm .
cheers
Sourabh
My old and new site urls are the same since I migrated my site content from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Not sure how to use this and get those errors fixed…Please advice! Thanks!
I used this plugin after migrating from Blogger to WordPress. None of my image URLs are updating…so none of my images are currently showing on my blog (www.fitchocoholic.com). Can anyone help me with this? I’m freaking out!
I installed this plugin and is working perfectly.
But my question is, why doest it work on the content build using Content Builder plugins like Visual composer or Muffin tool. i have certain hard-coded links it does change those link.
Any comments??
Hi Jatinder.
The reason this plugin doesn’t work for content inside Visual Composer is because Visual Composer stores the links in a strange way. If you click on “Classic Mode” in Visual Composer you’ll see that links don’t look like proper URLs.
For example, I have a VC button that points to this link:
example.com/services/adwords/
But in Classic Mode I can see that the link looks like this:
http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fservices%2Fadwords%2F
So this will be why Velvet Blues doesn’t change these links.
To fix the content, without having to manually edit every link, you’ll need to run another search and replace plugin and search for the urls using this structure.
Good tip, ive been trying to work this out for a while now, didn’t even occur to me that the url would have been done like that. Hooray.
hi, cool post. some media does not change. specifically the media that is added in theme options. any command to change all urls in all database? i change mine from .org/site for .org.br/site
tks.
It Means We Don’t Have to Use 301 Redirect If We Use This Plugin
Hi Syed
I am desperately looking to get advice on the following. I have recently flicked my website from http to https. It all works fine however the links in the content hasn’t changed to https. I was just wondering do I have to rewrite them all manually (hope I don’t) or is there any solutions for making them sitewide https?
Does anyone know the answer?
Thanks for your help in advance.
Henry
Please take a look at our guide on how to add SSL and HTTPS in WordPress. You will find instructions on how to properly setup SSL and how to handle URLs.
**SOS** I have recently changed my wordpress.com site to a wordpress.org site, I followed every instruction on your post about “How to Change Your WordPress.com to WordPress.org” (https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-properly-move-your-blog-from-wordpress-com-to-wordpress-org/). Everything seemed to transfer smoothly. However, I also ran the Velvet Blues plug-in and it did not work because I needed to update the domain name. I don’t know what to do to fix this, and I am still new at this enough that I don’t trust my abilities to manually adjust the links myself. I’ve already paid and set up/activated everything through Bluehost, and I noticed on the link above that you guys also will change everything over for an individual for free. Is it to late for you to help with that? I desperately need the help and I don’t want to do anything else to “mess up” my new blog further.
Have you been able to solve your wordpress migration challenge?
Hi there, I can’t figure out how to edit my original URL, because my default blog address is a wordpress.com address that I can’t seem to change. I’ve transfered everything else to a wordpress.org site including updating the name servers to bluehost, and I wonder if this last blog url
detail is holding me back?
Whoa, I wish I used this instead of the Broken Links Checker plugin.
Hello there,
I have just used velvet blues update urls to change my urls to make them protocol relative, changin http://mydomain.com by //mydomain.com. In order to revert the changes, should I use http://mydomain.com in both the old and new url fields or should I enter //mydomain.com in the old url field and http://mydomain.com in the new url field?
Thank your. Love your site!
Does changing the links have to be associated with a site move? I.e., I work in an area where tons of wordpress content addresses an internal URL that will be changing, and we’re looking for a way to do it en masse… would this be applicable? Can it ignore parameters in a URL?