Changing URL on very old site

  • Unknown's avatar
    hannahmumsdays · Member ·

    I’ve had a WordPress site since 2012 (11 years today in fact!) but it hasn’t been updated for about 6/7 years. I recently changed the URL – it didn’t work and now I seem to have lost everything. All the 800+ posts I’ve done over the years.

    Any ideas how to recover it?

    The old site url was mumsdays.com and I tried to change it to hannahharvey.uk.

    Thank you in advance!

    WP.com: Unknown
    Jetpack: Unknown
    Correct account: Unknown

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    Hi there:

    You’ve posted to the free support forums for websites hosted here at WordPress.com. Since your site is not hosted with us, we’re limited in what we can help with and advise. But I can get you pointed in the right direction to get help.

    Changing your site URL first requires you to purchase the new domain and set up the domain at your hosting provider before you change the URLs under Settings > General in your wp-admin dashboard.

    However, when I just checked your site, it appears to be loading under mumsdays.com just fine, so it looks like you were able to undo that change.

    To change your site’s domain, your hosting provider will be able to help you with that.

    If you still have trouble, please reach out to the WordPress community for guidance:

    https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting

    I hope that helps!

  • Unknown's avatar
    hannahmumsdays · Member ·

    Hi there, Thank you so much for your reply. The site I’m having issues with IS hosted by WordPress. Originally it had the URL Mumsdays.com but I tried to change it to hannahharvey.uk and the transition over has not worked so now I can’t access my WordPress site or any of the 800+ existing blog posts that are stored there.

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Mumsdays.com used to be hosted here at WordPress.com, but it was moved to a different host about 8 years ago. Your site host is currently being masked by Cloudflare, so we cannot tell exactly where the site is currently hosted. But, the domain is hosted with Google.

    http://hannahharvey.uk/ is hosted by Go Daddy, but the nameservers are pointed over to us here at WordPress.com. However, it is not pointing to a particular WordPress.com site. Were you trying to connect it to the site mumsdays.com used to be connected to, mumtobedays.wordpress.com? That site has not been updated since 2012.

    I take it that you are trying to point hannahharvey.uk to the site that is showing up when you visit mumsdays.com. That site is not hosted with us here at WordPress.com. It may be hosted with Google, but if unsure, you will need to reach out to Cloudflare, as they hide the actual web host from whois.

    For the difference between WordPress.com (our managed hosting platform) and WordPress.org (your self-hosted site on a different host), please visit:

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

    Hopefully, this helps.

  • Unknown's avatar
    katiedawson1 · Member ·

    Hi there, just replying on Hannah’s behalf.

    The above is correct. Mumsdays.com domain is with google and hannahharvey.uk is with GoDaddy but we used to edit the original mumsdays.com site with the WordPress backend admin service if that makes sense?

    So before we changed the URL on mumsdays.com to hannahharvey.uk, we would visit mumsdays.com/wp-admin to log in and make changes to the site. I sort of hoped changing the domain in the settings to hannahharvey.uk would mean we would just be able to visit hannahharvey.uk/wp-admin to make the same changes but obviously it’s not as simple as this. Does this info help at all or is that not making any sense?

    Thanks!

    Katie

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The above is correct. Mumsdays.com domain is with google and hannahharvey.uk is with GoDaddy but we used to edit the original mumsdays.com site with the WordPress backend admin service if that makes sense?

    To clarify, we are a fully managed WordPress provider. We use a custom server environment that is fully optimized for WordPress and provides integrated caching and performance improvements, security, automatic updates to core software, robust backups, and in-house support from our WordPress.com Happiness Engineers. In addition, we use a customized version of WordPress (different from what you use at GoDaddy, for example) which is optimized for our infrastructure and offers the best performance possible.

    Because of this, we use a different dashboard than the site you are referring to, and we don’t offer backups and historical data for sites hosted elsewhere. You are welcome to connect to mumtobedays.wordpress.com and use it again, but we don’t have data for any content published in the time since you left our service.

    I sort of hoped changing the domain in the settings to hannahharvey.uk would mean we would just be able to visit hannahharvey.uk/wp-admin to make the same changes but obviously it’s not as simple as this. Does this info help at all or is that not making any sense?

    It does make sense, yes. Sadly though, in this case, there is nothing we can do to help. Of course, we’d love to have you back, and if we hosted you here, we would be happy to help further. But as it stands now, we can’t assist.

    Re-reading this thread, it sounds like you made a URL change in your WordPress settings, but if you can just set it back to mumsdays.com, you will be able to reconnect and see the content hosted with GoDaddy. We use a different method for changing your site address on WordPress.com, so we can’t walk you through how to do that, but you can get help from the folks in the open-source WordPress forums here:

    https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/

    I hope this helps point you in the right direction!

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