I suggest you take a little time and just move your WordPress site to the root folder of your website. It’s not very hard, just a lot of steps detailed below. Yes you could mess up your site but the odds are unlikely. To be 100% sure make a backup of your database and login via FTP and copy your site to your hard drive. Worse case you’ll be able to recover but you shouldn’t need to worry.

Disclaimer – No Warranty!

If you are not 100% confident with the idea of moving files/directories, using file manager in GoDaddy, changing settings in WordPress don’t even attempt this! The cost to hire an experienced person for this is much less than the frustration you’ll have making a mistake a long the way. I’m all for learning new concepts but don’t push it! Click here to inquire about us making these changes for you.

The Process Overview

Basically WordPress is installed in a sub-directory in your GoDaddy website. So we first need to go into WordPress and change the settings which tell it to use the sub-directory. We are changing http://yourblog.com/blog to remove the sub-directory /blog so your website url becomes http://yourblog.com. Problem is if you try to change WordPress after you move the files you’ll need to get SQL Database access to make changes and that gets really challenging!

So first you login to WordPress, change the URL, login to GoDaddy File Manager, move the files and then fix any missing images or links.

Getting Started

Depending upon your theme you may lose your custom header, rotating images, background images etc.. It depends on how the theme was coded. When you move your website files the configuration files may not change automatically. Just have copies ready before you make the move and upload when you’ve moved the site.

Open a web browser and login to your WordPress dashboard

1 – Login to your WordPress site then go to Settings>General and there you’ll see “WordPress Address and Blog Address” and they will show the subdirectory after your domain name like /wordpress or /blog. For now leave this window open and go to step 2

Open a new browser or tab and login to your GoDaddy Account

2- Open a new browser window or tab and login to GoDaddy. Click on Hosting Manager in the left column

In the next window on the right side click Manage Account under the words “Control Panel.”

When the next window opens, in the top left click the button “Your Files.”

This will open the online file manager which operates a lot like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder.

In the  left column choose your root directory if it’s not already chosen and then in the right column double click to open the sub directory that holds your WordPress install like /blog or /wordpress.

This is the directory and files you want to move to the root!

Warning number #2: If you are at all worried at this point don’t go forward as you can really mess up your site from here on!

Go back to WordPress and prepare it for the move

Step 3: Go back to the window with your WordPress dashboard opened and now remove/change the /blog or /wordpress from the Settings>General tab and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Your final URL should be your root directory not the sub-directory. This should be what you want the new website to resolve to. Again after removing the sub-directory click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

At this point your WordPress install thinks it’s now in the root but it’s not!
At this point your WordPress site is broken and won’t work… how scary but don’t worry!

Step 4: Go back to your GoDaddy window with the file manager open. In the left column click the sub-directory folder with your WordPress files and directories in it. This will display your files in the right column.

Look close at the toolbar and there’s a setting for “Page Size” set this to 50 so you can see all your files and folders in one window.

Now click the check mark next to Filename at the top of the folder list in the right box. It will check or highlight all your folders and files. You want it to say 28 of 28 files or 31 of 31 files so you know they are all selected.

If you leave the above setting at 25 you risk not selecting all your files. If you see more than one page of files something is wrong.

You should have less than 50 files/folders in your site. If you have a very large site you may need to move files in two steps. The goal is to get all the files into the root directory.

NOTE: I’m assuming here your root folder is empty. If you have another WordPress site or website you’ll want to first make a sub-directory and move these files FIRST. Then copy your WordPress files!

Make sure you are copying your files into an empty HTML directory. There will be folders but you don’t want to try and overwrite an existing website!

Next you select the Move icon in the very top toolbar and you’ll be prompted to choose your root folder. Next in the left box you want to choose your root folder of your website and then click ok. Generally this is “html” and click ok.

File manager will now move your web files, directories, plugins, themes, etc. to the root of your website.

When completed go back and check your original folder /blog or /wordpress and make sure it’s empty! If there are still files, select the remaining files and move them to the root folder and you’ll be fine.

You’ve done it time to test!

Now go to your browser and type in your root url/domain name and next you’ll see your WordPress site appear!

Now you can login and look around your site.

Clean up and testing

Depending upon your theme your site may work but your header or background or items may be broken? Some themes have special rotating images or if you have a custom background you may need to reset this. I’ve even seen some themes misplace your header file. Don’t worry the images are still there in your media library or your backup files. You may need to download and re-upload so the new url for the file is set.

Install the plugin Broken Link Checker and activate it. This plugin will scan your site and let you know of any links that are broken. WordPress will update your site links when you change the settings BUT it will not change any links you’ve placed inside of a post or page. Broken Link Checker will find the problem links and allow you to edit them. Just remove the reference to the sub-directory and save the link and you are good to go again!

Troubleshooting Problems

IF you setup a GoDaddy re-direct you’ll have to disable that

IF your domain name is forwarded to a sub-directory you’ll have to change that.

If you get 404 errors or page not found double check your browser isn’t taking you to the old site.

If that’s not the case make sure your files got moved to the root folder.

If the folders were moved ok first try another web browser. If you use Firefox try Internet Explorer to make sure you don’t have your pages in cache.

Maybe you didn’t save your WordPress settings? WordPress may still be trying to find the sub-directory and you’ve moved the files? You can change this in the SQL DB but that’s another long post!

Reversing what you have done

If there’s no other hope you can copy your files from the root HTML directory back into your sub-directory and test again to see if WordPress works. If it does change your General>Settings url and save. Next move the files back and you’ll be good to go.

Worse case reverse all we’ve done and go back to where you started but I hope you haven’t got this far to even read this

Any questions, comments or clarification just let me know!

Bob Randklev

CyberInnovation.com

Point is the majority of Internet users understand email and the last thing they want is another RSS Reader on top of checking in with their social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or by following Twitter. If you own/manage/contribute to a blog and people find your blog interesting you want to give them an option to subscribe to your posts/news/updates.

Another way to say this is every time you update your WordPress.org site (either posts-pages or both) an email is sent to your email subscriber base. So how do you collect these email subscribers?

There are numerous plugins available for WordPress.org and external solutions that can be linked into your blog. Today I’ll talk about the most popular solutions chosen by our clients.

Subscribe2 – (Free)

Subscribe2 is a Free plugin to add email user management to your WordPress site. Due to the cost this is a very popular plug-in especially for people getting started with their first blog.

Once you install and activate Subscribe2 your registered users in WordPress are notified of any changes/blog posts moving forward. You can disable notifications for page updates or only send updates for certain categories. There are a number of settings to set future configurations if you add categories etc..

You also have the ability to edit the default subscription/notification and unsubscribe emails. HTML or text emails, send email for every post or a daily/weekly digest.

A common option is to enable the sidebar widget so you can add the “email subscription” widget to your blog. Now people can easily add their name and email address and click subscribe.

To see an example of the widget you can visit: http://LaurieSexton.com

To learn more about Subscribe2 visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe2/

If you need more advanced Double-Opt In email management or you want more control over the look/feel of the HTML notifications keep reading. Otherwise Subscribe2 will take care of your needs for a very good cost!

G-Lock Double Opt-in Manager (Free up to $349)

If you need a more advanced email subscription manager and/or you are looking to do a lot bulk mail G-Lock has a free plugin to manage your email subscribers in WordPress. They also offer a separate program for bulk mailing and there is a free version, Personal version $149.00 and Business Edition $349. Here is the description of the personal version right from the G-Lock website:

You can easily manage opt-in mailing lists for your subscribers, create personalized messages such as HTML newsletters, e-magazines, account statements, reports, statistics, bills to your customers and send them with G-Lock EasyMail in just minutes. G-Lock EasyMail easy-to-use address book provides a convenient place to store the recipient information. You can use the program built-in database to segment your recipients into groups in order to send more relevant targeted emails.

Visit the G-Lock website here: http://www.glockeasymail.com/

To learn more about the WordPress plugin go here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/g-lock-double-opt-in-manager/

If you are looking to just notify subscribers of blog posts/updates Subscribe2 will take care of your needs. If you need to bulk mail, send newsletters and sync your subscriber info to another program G-Lock is a good solution and one time cost.

aWeber.com (Starts at $19/month)

aWeber is not specifically created or developed for WordPress but it’s very powerful and easy to integrate with any web platform! With aWeber  you have a simple “subscribe to” form on your website but your subscriber information is stored at aWeber. Now you can login to aWeber and create amazing newsletters, announcements and more! Plus you configure Blog/RSS to subscribers so anytime you update your WordPress blog you subscribers get an update.

Custom landing/confirmation pages. You can also create custom confirmation landing pages and direct subscribers to specific website URL’s. So when a subscriber enters their email address and name they click submit and are redirected to your custom confirmation page saying thank you then a link to redirect them back to your site.

Custom fields: Do you want to collect a full name? Postal address? phone? or any other questions? You can create custom sign up forms and ask any question you like.

Custom HTML emails: You can edit your HTML formatted emails going to your subscribes to include your colors/logos, links to other sites or information and make it look more like a custom newsletter. There are numerous templates to choose from and edit to fit your needs

You pay a flat monthly fee and you can create multiple subscriber lists, multiple registration forms, multiple HTML templates, multiple RSS to email templates etc…

The theme with aWeber is “multiple.” If you have multiple websites and/or want to manage multiple subscriber lists or maybe you just want one list but you have multiple sites you can copy the same subscriber form to all your websites and collect all your subscribers into one solution at aWeber.

To learn more about aWeber and get a free trial account click here: http://aWeber.com

CyberInnovation.com – Consulting and/or implementation services

We can help your organization with a strategy to drive more people to your website and collect email subscribers for future marketing and updates. Our focus is to help our clients balance form with function which in turn compares price to features. Whether you need a consultant to help you build your solution or our designers/developers to create a solution for you we can help! Contact us today for more information!