Moving WordPress may seem like a huge, daunting task to someone who looks at a phpMyAdmin interface and thinks “If I touch this, the world will explode.” There are many, many ways to move your WordPress installation, and you’ll be quite surprised to learn exactly how easy it can be.

For your pleasure, I have a guinea pig for this one You can thank Jacqueline for allowing me to do this for her. (I’ll pass the link later - because I’m literally moving WP for her - into a whole new directory, up one level from where it is now! So once I’m done, the link will be changed )

So I have favorite methods for moving a WordPress installation. There’s the official method, and there are other standby “absolutely safe” methods (such as using the “Import/Export feature that’s built in to the newer versions of WP), but me, I’m impatient, and I like things to be down and dirty, and fast. So I’m going to show you my favorite way of doing this.

NOTE: Craig posted a really great - and even easier - way of doing this if all you’re looking to do is change the “slug” of where WordPress is located. Just scroll down to the comments section and find his post. If that’s all you’re looking to do - then by all means, try his advice first!

Warning: Be absolutely sure you have a backup before you try this. I’m not kidding. If you screw up, and you don’t have a backup, you can kiss your blog goodbye. Although I can say that I have yet to seriously mess a site up by this particular method (you’re not really messing with too much stuff, but still…) I’m not taking any responsibility whatsoever for you choosing to follow this method. So play it smart - get a backup before you even try any of this.

So, here we go…
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