Later this week, I plan to launch the new WP site. I want to make sure I know what to do. I've read the "Giving Wordpress Its Own Directory" thread over at wordpress.org, and it makes sense, almost. I might need some advice.

Here is what I plan to do:

My new WP site is in a folder called /wp27/. The "old" site is in the root, with index.html as the front page.

I'll delete index.html (copy and save it on my hard drive, of course), and move /wp27/index.php and /wp27/.htaccess to the root. This way, all the old content is still there and searchable, but people will land on index.php if they go to http://www.larchmontgazette.com. I plan to make a user-friendly 404 page at some point, too.

The only thing worrying me now is this bit from the wordpress.com instructions:

#  Copy the index.php and .htaccess files from the WordPress directory into the root directory of your site (Blog address).
# Open your root directory's index.php file in a text editor
# Change the following and save the file. Change the line that says:
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
to the following, using your directory name for the WordPress core files:
require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');

This assumes the old site was a PHP site too. Ours is HTML. So I can skip these steps, right?

A refinement that isn't necessary but might be nice: can I simply change /wp27/ to /wp/? I used the 27 (2.7) to prevent confusion while I had 2 other WP folders running during testing of themes. I would rather just have it plain wp, but I'm afraid of possible effects on the database side of things.

You moving a WP from root to a folder? if so may be this can help http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr7a8...e=channel_page he also has video of moving to root from folder - probably also from old to new server.

Redirecting should be something like this, content of index.php in root:

PHP Code:

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.xxxx.xxx/wp27/index.php");
exit(0);
?>

Eh, .htaccess you keep in WP folder I think. Pretty sure about that but 99% sure this is most correct way of redirecting and what Google want to see Had to research this some months ago while helping someone. Bookmarked this http://www.stevenhargrove.com/redire...mment-page-12/ lots of confusion on how to redirect, search code.

Also bookmarked this about moving WP about http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

Hi there. No, I'm not moving WP at all, leaving all those files in /wp27/. I just want to move the index.php file to the root, so the user arrives seamlessly at the WP installation. There is no separate blog area. We are using WP as our CMS, replacing the old HTML file system, but the old content will remain where it is.

http://www.larchmontgazette.com/wp27/ is how things stand now, and after the change, you should see the same content if you just go to http://www.larchmontgazette.com/ .

Thanks for the links. I'm building quite a resource bookmarks folder.

See http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_Wo..._Own_Directory

Hi, yes, I did see that and mentioned it in my post. I'm not moving anything except the index.php file, to take the place of the current index.html. All I need to know, I think, is whether or not I need to also modify and move .htaccess.

Originally Posted by paulae

Later this week, I plan to launch the new WP site. I want to make sure I know what to do. I've read the "Giving Wordpress Its Own Directory" thread over at wordpress.org, and it makes sense, almost. I might need some advice.

Here is what I plan to do:

My new WP site is in a folder called /wp27/. The "old" site is in the root, with index.html as the front page.

I'll delete index.html (copy and save it on my hard drive, of course), and move /wp27/index.php and /wp27/.htaccess to the root. This way, all the old content is still there and searchable, but people will land on index.php if they go to http://www.larchmontgazette.com. I plan to make a user-friendly 404 page at some point, too.

The only thing worrying me now is this bit from the wordpress.com instructions:

#  Copy the index.php and .htaccess files from the WordPress directory into the root directory of your site (Blog address).
# Open your root directory's index.php file in a text editor
# Change the following and save the file. Change the line that says:
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
to the following, using your directory name for the WordPress core files:
require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');

This assumes the old site was a PHP site too. Ours is HTML. So I can skip these steps, right?

A refinement that isn't necessary but might be nice: can I simply change /wp27/ to /wp/? I used the 27 (2.7) to prevent confusion while I had 2 other WP folders running during testing of themes. I would rather just have it plain wp, but I'm afraid of possible effects on the database side of things.

Sorry I overlooked that you already had that URL with the instructions from Wordpress.

Do not skip those steps. They don't have anything to do with your old site. Also, your old site URLs will keep working because Wordpress only redirects if a URL/file does not exist, that's what -f ("if such as file doesn't exist") and -d ("if such as directory doesn't exist") in the .htaccess file mean.

The URL http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_Wo..._Own_Directory describes exactly what you want to do.

You should definitely be able to choose another subdirectory such as /wp/. That's just an entry in the database which you will change by adjusting the Wordpress URL in your WP settings, see step 3 at that URL

Just to be sure, in step 9 you'd use
require('./wp/wp-blog-header.php');
then

Well add that Youtube dudes site to your bookmarks http://educhalk.org/blog/ He has made many videos - some irrelevant since you already do what he charge for! And most about themes, plugins is done here of course. Still nice collection and he seems to keep spitting them out so worth a look. In case you dont know XAMPP there is a couple of good ones from yesterday. Better to experiment offline than online

I'm not moving the WP files at all. My WP files are in /wp/27. They are staying there. I have moved the WP index.php file to root, deleted the old index.html file in root, changed the settings in General, and also put /wp27 ahead of /wp-blog-header.php in index.php.

I found that if I followed the directions and substituted the WP .htaccess file for the old one, I got server errors. I put the old one back, and it worked. Looks like the WP stuff got added to the old one.

All seems to be working, but everything loads very slowly. Any idea why?

I installed WP in a separate directory to develop the new site. Moved index.php to root, made the single directory adjustment to the file as discussed and it's running off root. Easy peasy.