First of all, if you are looking for a guide about how to replace your existing site with site developed in a subdomain, have a look at this excellent thread. Another good piece of advice can be found here.
Here I ask a couple of questions directly related to the information above. When following the steps above (while attempting to replace my existing site (say, domainB.com, now using Joomla!) with a site developed in an unrelated subdomain (say, test.domainA.com, using Wordpress)
I asked these questions first as a reply to the first link posted, but realized they might find a better home in their own thread. Here follows an updated version of these questions:
My questions concern the change from CMS (Joomla to wordpress), while keeping the same URL. Unfortunately I have not created my new (temporary address) website in a sub domain, but rather on a test domain. so this is my first question:
1] Are the steps above also valid for moving between two unrelated URLs (say, from test.domainA.com to domainB.com)
My next question concerns the use of the dreamhost webFTP. I used that since it came recommended, but probably I did not do it right. In step 2 and 3 I need to rename the relevant folders (move domainB.com to domainB.com.old, then create a new clean folder “domainB.com”, and one-click-install WP in the folder. When I tried that I received an error saying “Joomla! has already been installed at http://www.domainB.com”. I got around this by removing the joomla installation in domainB.com via the user panel.
2] Is there a better way of doing this? And why did I receive the error when following the steps described above?
When following step 6 (changing the URL in the WP dashbord of the old site (test.domainA.com), I changed both fields (the wordpress address and the site address). This resulted in a then dysfunctional old website. In the end what I did was first following step 7 (renaming the old directory (test.domainA.com) to the new directory (domainB.com). Afterward I edited the wp-config file by adding the following lines:
define(‘WP_HOME’,‘http://www.domainB.com’);
define(‘WP_SITEURL’,‘http://www.domainB.com’);
3] Did I mess up step 6? Should I only have changed wp OR site address? And is the hard coding both addresses via wp-config going to bite me in the ass later on?
4] I already have a blog installed in domainB.com/blog/ (wordpress). Can I copy/paste this onto test.domainA.com/blog/ and will it then survive the move to domainB.com/blog/?
I look forward to a reply, and hope these questions are not extremely trivial (actually, despite my ego, i do!). I did search the forums here for answers but could not find a direct answer. Thanks you for your time.