WordPress is very easy to install however sometimes beginners end up installing WordPress in a subdirectory instead of the root directory of their website, e.g. http://www.example.com/wordpress/ instead of http://www.example.com. If you accidentally installed WordPress in a subdirectory and now want to move it to the root directory, then you’re in the right place. In this article, we will show you how to get rid of /wordpress/ from your site’s URL.
Note: The method shown in this tutorial works for other subdirectories as well.
If you have not uploaded any content to your site, then you can delete the existing WordPress install and start over by following our complete WordPress installation tutorial. However, if you already have your site up and running, then continue reading.
First you need to log in to your WordPress site’s admin area and go to Settings » General. On the settings page, you will see WordPress Address and Site Address fields and both will have the same URL. You need to change the Site Address option to point to your root domain, e.g. http://www.example.com and leave WordPress Address option as it is. Once you do that, click on Save Changes button to store your settings.
Next, you need to connect to your website using a FTP client. Once you are connected, go to the /wordpress/ directory and download the .htaccess and index.php files to the Desktop on your computer.
It is possible that you may not see .htaccess file in your /wordpress/ directory because it is a hidden file, and your FTP client may not show it. To see the hidden file, you need to enable showing hidden files option in your FTP client. If you are using Filezilla, then you need to click on Server from the menu bar and select ‘Force Showing Hidden Files’ option.
Once you have downloaded both files to your Desktop, you need to open index.php file in a text editor like Notepad. In this file you will find a line like this:
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wp-blog-header.php' );
This line loads wp-blog-header.php file, which is required to load the front-end of your WordPress site. What you need to do now is enter the correct location of the file by replacing the existing line with this one:
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php' );
Save your changes and upload both index.php and .htaccess files from your desktop to the root of your domain using FTP. The root folder is the parent folder with the wordpress folder inside it usually called /www/ or /public_html/
That’s all. You can now visit your website on your main domain, and everything will work fine. However, if you need to login to your WordPress admin, then you will still need to go to the wp-admin inside the wordpress directory like this:
http://www.example.com/wordpress/wp-admin
We hope that this tutorial helped you get rid of /wordpress/ from your site’s URL. For feedback and questions leave a comment below.
Thank you so much! The guide I was reading didn’t mention the .htaccess part. This guide fixed the error on my site. Great work!
Hi!
Great tutorial, and my URL now redirects (woohoo!)
However when I go the settings tab and change the site title to the one without /wordpress, the site works fine except for the home page, which gives an error.
What am I missing here…?
Hi there!
I have my site hosted on my server. WordPress dir is located in /home/myuser/.
I tried to follow your steps by copying the updated index.php and .htaccess into same dir level where wordpress dir is. But no success.
Can you pl guide? Thank you.
If I have a wordpress instance in a subdirectory and I just want to delete it and not move it, can I just delete the folder, or do I need to go through some kind of un-install procedure so it is removed from the database as well?
Hi Rachel,
Yes you can delete it. However, we will still recommend to download it as a backup before deleting it.
Hey, so i had a go at this, and for some reason i am now faced with an HTTP 500 error.
Not sure where i went wrong, but i don’t seem to be able to get it back to normal.
Any ideas would be much appreciated.
I have tried resetting the index.php back to default as well as the .htacess file with no avail.
To make matters more difficult i get the same HTTP 500 message when trying to login to the wordpress admin as well.
Hi Michael,
My folder is called “/wp” instead of “/wordpress”, so probably yours too!
That might be the problem…
I had the same problem, and my folder was called wp. I just went back to the index.html file and changed it from wordpress to wp and problem solved! Such a helpful article, this was hanging over my head for months and so glad to have it fixed!
Hi Syed, many thanks for all these, I have been postponing my site for over a year now as it was simply too intimidating. I had however made the fault of installing wordpress to the subdomain /wp and set the entire site up. Just sorted it out with you tut above. I have however come across a new problem, my home/landing page no longer loads my blog posts. How do I resolved this? I also get a redirect error as well.
Hi Gareth,
Good luck with your new website. Wish we could be more helpful, but it is up to the theme and your website settings. Please see our WordPress troubleshooting guide to figure out whats causing it.
Hi, I followed these steps and my website is working fine. Only issue is now I can’t seem to load my theme’s UX Builder for my site.
does this method cause any issue if I am using a theme UX builder?
Hi Yan Xun,
Here is what you can try. First create a backup of your website. After that Uninstall the UX builder by visiting the plugins page, now install and activate it again.
If it comes packaged with your theme, then again create a backup of your website. After that you need to download a fresh copy of your theme. Next, temporarily switch your WordPress site to a default WordPress theme like TwentySeventeen. Delete your old theme and then install it from the zip file you downloaded earlier.
Help! I followed your tutorial for removing wordpress. Now I can’t get into the site or admin.
Getting the following:
Warning: require(/home/content/09/8001609/html/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/content/09/8001609/html/index.php on line 17
Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘/home/content/09/8001609/html/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php’) in /home/content/09/8001609/html/index.php on line 17
Done that, and ‘/wordpress’ from addressbar is gone, but Google still lists it with it in the search. For example:
Hi Marko,
You will need to redirect those users. See our guide on how to setup redirects in WordPress.
Thanks guys i love u <3
This tutorial is a life saviour. Thank you so much.
Thanks for your helpful website. I downloaded .htaccess and index.php. My index php says index.php4 The line on it says this: .htaccess disapears when I download it to the desktop. In ftp, they are located in the same folder as the wordpress1 folder is located. It appears to be the root directory. The site has the url with wordpress1 at the end of it. I’m not sure what to do, and don’t want to crash the site!
Thanks,
Beth
Can I ask why you download .htaccess only to upload it again?, there is no mention of edting htaccess so why download in the first place ?
I believe he’s asking us to download the one from the /wordpress/ subdirectory and then upload it to the / root (which is up one level). I hope that helps
HI,
Thankyou so much for these helpful tutorials my one problem is solved but there is one another. When I search on google and type my website address it shows index of link instead of my website name. When I click on that link it opens my website. Can anyone help me to display my website URL on google instead of index of URL.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
I spent hours working on it (failure) and then found your site + explanation.
SUPERB!
1. I have moved my example.com WP installation into subfolder (let’s call it “secret-sub”).
2. Typing example.com/wp-login.php automatically re-directs me to example.com/secret-sub/wp-login.php :((
((Note: Visiting no other part of my web page shows this subfolder name as part of URL address; visitors see only example.com everywhere.))
Is this normal behaviour?
And if so – what’s actually the point of having your WP installation in “secret” subfolder – when basic /wp-login.php and /wp-admin brute attack re-directs to URL showing the “secret subfolder” name??
Any clear explanation will be very much appreciated. Thx.
Hi Filip Kevely,
When you install another WordPress instance in a sub-folder it creates a conflict for WordPress permalinks. To fix that you need to add this code to your sub-folder site’s .htaccess file:
# BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /secret-sub/ RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /secret-sub/index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPressDon’t forget to replace secret-sub with the actual subfolder name.
How do you get rid of FEATURED CONTENT on your blog? I eliminated footers without a problem, but can’t get rid of featured content showing up on the blog front page.
Hi there, I am pulling my hair out…….I dont have the wordpress address url or the Site Address url under settings general! I have one site with nothing on it with my web address and then another site which I have fixed up with the same name but then wordpress.com at the end, any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have followed given the instruction but I am facing problem my website is not open correct and wp login penal is not coming please help me quickly.
Hello,
I successfully got rid of /wordpress from site URL following the instructions in the tutorial but once i installed yoast for seo , google shows the pages with /worpress in its search results.how can we remove that from google search results also?
Thank you! This works great!
Please help, I thought I had followed the steps correctly but am receiving this error when I type in my web domain:
Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘/home/melanieh/public_html/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/melanieh/public_html/index.php on line 17
What did I do wrong?
Thank you man this work after so many hard work. Thanks again keep it up…..will come here for wordpress problem
problem with 404, I resolve it in a longest manner, First I just open the post and click update, it works,.. although if you got a thousand post then you grow beard before you finish everything,..
second solution
another solution, although i never test this type of solutions in my active sites,
1. first thing first back-up your wordpress website,
2. when back-up is done, got to tools and click export, it will create xml file
3. delete all post,..
4. Import the xml file that you exported,. and and everythng go smoothly,..
Thank you for the great tutorial. Worked perfectly!
everything worked except my root domain name.
when I go to mydomain.com I get a 500 error, but all my links mydomain.com/contact mydomain.com/links look fie
Hi,
have you checked if you REALLY have a “yourdomain/wordpress” directory?
Or a “yourdomain/wp” directory!
Because if you do you have to change the index.php editing accordingly ; )
Hope that helps,, it worked for me ; )
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!
how to check whether i have a /wordpress or a /wp directory? and what following changes should i make then in the index.php file?
Thank you for this reply!! Your answer is what helped me solve my problem. I didn’t realize you couldn’t just use ‘wordpress’ as the tutorial said but needed to use the exact subdirectory name. it worked. Thanks!!
I was moving our word press site from the root folder to a sub folder and everything almost worked. The only exception was that I couldn’t find a way to remove the sub-folder from the domain URL. This site had the easiest instructions and was easy to follow. It worked perfectly the 1st time. Thank You!
Hi Vernon,
Glad you found it helpful
Don’t forget to join us on Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
I followed the steps but now my website page isn’t working. And I cannot open my wordpress admin page either. Help?
I followed the steps but now my website page isn’t working. And I cannot open my wordpress admin page either. Help?
You say upload the ht access file but you never say how to edit it?
I never leave comments but this post was just so clear and helpful that I have to say THANK YOU!!! :-)))
Hi Alexandra,
Thanks, we are glad you found it helpful. Don’t forget to join us on Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
Thank you so much for this – it worked and as a total WP novice I can’t believe I did it myself! You’re awesome
Hey JO,
We are glad you found it helpful
You may also want to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
Thanks so much for this. I did install WP into a subdirectory and then spent a week remaking the site so that it was installed in the root directory
At least now I know better after reading your tutorial.
Hello, Thanks for the tutorial, I’m pretty new to WordPress, I did a one click install and it was a multisite installation too. The website URL and domain URL fields are’nt available under settings. Please how do I go about this on a multisite???
Wonderful tutorial, worked perfectly, thanks man
Hi, great article, the first one I found which explains this topic in a good matter.
I have a similar problem, but a little bit more tricky. I do not know how it happened, but certainly I have done something strange at the WP installation. If I check my homepage it is actually in another extra worpress folder, that means I have WP in another WP folder, so my homepage looks like this: “www.example.com/wordpress/wordpress”. in the filemanager in the frp client i can see in the public_html two folders of wordpress. I did not move yet the wordpress folder with the content one level up and actually eliminate the other folder, because I am worried that I will mass it up.
Has anybody have an idea what would be the best solution? So I actually get the homepage opened under: “www.example.com” and not “www.example.com/wordpress/wordpress”?
thanks for any good hint/solution.
Thank you so much for this!! I did everything you said to do, and almost everything works. There’s just one page that stopped working and is returning a 404 error page. Can you help? Thanks!
I tried, but the space that says Website Address and site address does not exist in my General area in Settings.
Is there another way to do it?
I see that several have the same problem as me, but I can not see any response to the issue.
That is that everything seems to work fine except for:
the home-page which is still directing to site.com/wordpress and therefore shows a 404 page.
I did try to delete the htaccess file from the root directory and update the url-structure. it created a new htaccess file but the problem still is the same..
Would really appreciate your response to this!
Thank you for a great post.
My problem was from menu
Try to check your URL from WP-admin —>>> appearance —>>> menu —>>> home —>>> custom link URL
hello
how can i remove my blog Im not a the owner of a site can i still remove my blog even im not the owner.please help me
I have a question, is there something like this for Joomla? Because I couldn’t find anything on the internet.
Hello,
First of all thanks for this article. But there is one problem stand for me.
As I followed your step as you mention so i got Index.php but didn’t find .htaccess file.
But i did same mean
change ‘/wp-blog-header.php’ to ‘/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’
but my home page only show without /wordpress and rest of pages will show 404- error.
please help me to slove this problem.
It is not working me
I have two domains in a single account. and so two wordpress installations in two subfolders. In this case, is it possible to move index.php and .htaccess of both sites to same root directory. If not what to do ?
You can make use of vhost go in the conf of ur webhost and do something like:
This will make the subfolder the root for the domain you want to
Gah! I followed the steps and it was fine. Then I went to permalinks, hit save changes and it broke! I’m getting a 500 error message! Please help me! I need to fix it! Thank you x
Still have the same problem? I can help you
HI, everyone, i have an urgent query that
my client website a news website now we want to launch Hindi and Urdu version of news so
we decided to create a folder in
public_html/www.example.com/hi
public_html/www.example.com/ur
public_html/www.example.com/fr
and install wordpress
But we want our site url should be like this:
http://www.example.com/hindi/article-title-slug
http://www.example.com/urdu/article-title-slug
is this possible and if yes then how can i do it plz help
It is possible. There are multiple ways to do this. You can consider creating a multilingual WordPress site. This will eliminate maintaining separate WordPress installs.
You can also go installing multiple WordPress instances in separate directories for each language. You will have to setup redirects in .htaccess file.
You are great! Thanks so much for helping! =)
Hello! Thanks for the tutorial, that’s exactly what I needed.
However, when trying to follow the steps, I realised that I don’t have the index.php file in my /wordpress/ directory. Is that weird? I can see the .htaccess, but the index.php is not there!!!
Can you help me please?
Thank you so much!
Sorry, already found it! I’ll try the steps and get you update about the results! Thanks!!!!
This worked but now the admin bar is not visible when navigating the site. One of the perks of WordPress is the ability to easily navigate and edit pages. How can I add the admin bar back to the site?
This worked so well for me – thank you so much
Hi,
I executed al these steps and it works great except for my home-page.
When accessing my home-page the /wordpress is still appended to the url, but the page is no longer found. All other pages are working fine.
My first thought was to deactivate all plugins, but that didn’t help. No matter what I am doing, still getting that error.
Any advice would be great !
You can try these steps:
Connect to your website using an FTP client. In the root directory you will find a .htaccess file. Download it to your computer. Delete the original file from your website. Visit your site’s admin area and go to Settings » Permalinks. Do not change any settings on the page, just click on the save changes button. Check your website to see if the error has resolved.
HI, I have followed these instrucs to the letter, too….. the home page url still loads as example.com/wordpress and I get a 404 error. Subpages work just fine, it is the home page. Tried the above suggestions but still receiving 404 error. Any other suggestions?
Well, I finally found the issue why wordpress was still appended to the URL of my homepage only. In the document root there was a index.html containing a permanent redirect to
mysite/wordpress. I am using Apache as webserver; the default search-order for Apache is index.html before index.php.
Thank you so much for pointing out the Apache issue. I too have an index.html file. How did you fix your issue ?