Migrate old WordPress site to a subdomain via cPanel

Question

I'm a volunteer with non-profit helping with their website. I'm accustomed to working the frontend, but not the backend. We recently connected the website domain to a new site on Squarespace. Since the domain is now connected to a new site, we can't access the old WordPress site to grab some additional content, etc. Therefore, we want to move the old WP site to an existing sub-domain at the WordPress host.

How can I do this via the cPanel at the WordPress host? (The hosting provider has said they can do it for a fee, but the non-profit would like me to have a go at it first.)

Answer 1

Make the subdomain old.example.com and point it to the same directory as the original site

Open a database editor such as phpMyAdmin and enter the database for the original site.

If there is more than one database and you aren't sure which one, you will find it defined in wp-config.php

Look for define( 'DB_NAME', 'user_database' ); the database name is whatever is in the place of user_database.

Once in the database, open the wp_options table and you should see two records. One for siteurl and one for home, they will both have https://example.com. If you can't see them both, one may be on the next page of records.

Double click the field that has your domain name and it should become editable, change it to https://old.example.com - click away and it auto-saves. Do this for both records.

If double click doesn't work, click the edit icon, make the changes and save for each.

Answer 2

I migrated my old HTML website to WordPress not so long back.

I made the mistake not creating a .htacess file with my old site IP address.

Ping your website and enter the IP address into a web browser. If your WordPress site loads using the IP address you're good to go. If it does not, you need to add a .htaccess file to the root of your site using cPanel.