Migrate a Joomla site to a new domain

Migrating a Joomla (content management system) site to a new domain on Loopia hosting is straightforward and mainly involves copying web files via FTP and updating the configuration.php file. This guide walks through the steps to move a Joomla installation between domains.

You will need an FTP client and an FTP account for your hosting space: FTP clients.

Example addresses and paths

The following example addresses and FTP paths are used throughout this guide.

• Present address: http://new.example.com
• FTP path to web files: /new.example.com/public_html/
• Target address: http://example.com/
• FTP path to web files: /example.com/public_html/

Step-by-step migration

Follow these steps to move the Joomla files and update the configuration to point at the new domain.

1. Copy all web files from new.example.com/public_html to example.com/public_html.
2. Download configuration.php from the newly copied example.com/public_html folder.
3. Open configuration.php in Notepad or a similar text editor and change the following:

var $live_site = '';
var $log_path = '/your/absolute/filepath/new.example.com/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/your/absolute/filepath/new.example.com/tmp';
var $cache_path = '/your/absolute/filepath/new.example.com/cache';
var $ftp_root = 'public_html/';

Change it to:

var $live_site = '';
var $log_path = '/your/absolute/filepath/example.com/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/your/absolute/filepath/example.com/tmp';
var $cache_path = '/your/absolute/filepath/example.com/cache';
var $ftp_root = 'public_html/';

4. If you have set the live_site value, change it accordingly:

var $live_site = 'http://new.example.com';

Change it to:

var $live_site = 'http://example.com';

5. Save your changes and upload configuration.php back to the same folder.

If the site does not load correctly

If the website does not load correctly, check the .htaccess file via FTP to confirm that the address has also been updated on the RewriteBase row. If not, change the address there as well.