Changing the Site URL Print

On the Settings->General screen in a single site installation of WordPress, there are two fields named "WordPress Address (URL)" and "Site Address (URL)". They are important settings, since they control where WordPress thinks your site is located. They control the display of the URL in the admin section of your page, as well as the front end, and are used throughout the WordPress code.

• The "Site Address (URL)" setting is the address you want people to type in their browser to reach your WordPress blog.
• The "WordPress Address (URL)" setting is the address where your WordPress core files reside.

Note: Both settings should include the http:// part and should not have a slash "/" at the end.

Every once in a while, somebody finds a need to manually change (or fix) these settings. Usually this happens when they change one or both and discover that their site no longer works properly. This can leave the user with no easily discoverable way to correct the problem. This article tells you how to change these settings directly.

Additional information is presented here for the case where you are moving WordPress from one site to another, as this will also require changing the site URL. You should not attempt to use this additional information if you're only attempting to correct a "broken" site.

There are four easy methods to change the Site URL manually. Any of these methods will work and perform much the same function.

Edit wp-config.php

It is possible to set the site URL manually in the wp-config.php file.

Add these two lines to your wp-config.php, where "example.com" is the correct location of your site.

define('WP_HOME','http://example.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://example.com');

This is not necessarily the best fix, it's just hardcoding the values into the site itself. You won't be able to edit them on the General settings page anymore when using this method.

Edit functions.php

If you have access to the site via FTP, then this method will help you quickly get a site back up and running, if you changed those values incorrectly.

1. FTP to the site, and get a copy of the active theme's functions.php file. You're going to edit it in a simple text editor and upload it back to the site.

2. Add these two lines to the file, immediately after the initial "<?php" line.