Website

Change your website name

Changing a website name involves changing the domain name connected to it, which is the URL used to access the website.

⚠️ Please note these are general guidelines and each website name change scenario will vary. You can follow the entire guide or go directly to the section or steps that pertain to your task at hand.

Register your new domain name

When you want to change a website name for your website, you require a new domain name to be registered and ready for use. You can register the domain name through your Nexym user portal, which will make it available for use immediately. If you register your domain name externally, additional action steps and a waiting period apply.

  • If registering a domain name through Nexym, in this section, complete only steps 1a. and 4.
  • If registering a domain name at an external provider, in this section, complete steps 1b. through to 4.

1a. Register your domain name from your Nexym user portal. Once registered, go to step 4 in this section.

1b. Go to your external domain registrar and register your new domain name

2. Change your domain name nameservers to the Nexym nameservers

3. Once you’ve updated to the Nexym nameservers, you will need to wait for the new nameservers and SSL certificate to update across the internet on your domain name. Depending on your internet connection, this can take anywhere from a few hours or up to 24h. We recommend waiting a full 24h.

4. Log in to your hosting control panel and add your new domain name as a new domain to your hosting account

Move your website to your new domain name

⚠️ If you have already migrated your website to the correct folder, only complete steps 12-16 in this section. If you haven’t, complete all the steps.

In our example, we will change our website name from cloudhelpcenter.com to nexymhelp.com and we will use this terminology:

  • Source website name (old): cloudhelpcenter.com
  • Target website name (new): nexymhelp.com

Note: If your target website is completely new, make sure it’s already been added as a domain on your hosting control panel before starting the steps below.

1. Go to your hosting control panel

2. Click on the File Manager button

3. Double click on the domains folder

4. Locate your source (old) website name domain folder and double click on it

5. Double click on the public_html folder

6. Select all of your files by clicking them one by one, starting from wp-admin and going all the way to the bottom (you do not need to select the cgi-bin folder), you will see checkmarks next to each file once you’re done

7. Once you’ve selected all of the files, do a right-click on your mouse

8. From the dropdown, select Copy/Move to…

9. On the Copy/Move… popup, in the New Path field, put in the folder path where your target (new) domain name public_html is located. As an example, for the domain name nexymhelp.com – the folder path would be: 

/domains/nexymhelp.com/public_html

10. Once you’ve put in the new folder path, click the Move button

11. Now, return to your hosting control panel homepage

12. Click on the Terminal button

13. Access your source website name public_html folder, by typing in these commands in the exact order they appear below and one by one. Once you type in a command, hit enter on your keyboard to continue to the next one.

In any command you see cloudhelpcenter.com and nexymhelp.com – replace it with your own source website name and target website name. As a reminder, source = old website name, and target = new website name.

In our example, we are changing the website name from cloudhelpcenter.com to nexymhelp.com

1st command

cd domains

2nd command

cd nexymhelp.com

3rd command

cd public_html

4th command

wp search-replace 'https://cloudhelpcenter.com' 'https://nexymhelp.com' --all-tables --dry-run

14. After running the 4th command, verify that you get Success: message and a table replacement number above at least 0, and then move to the 5th and final command.

5th command

wp search-replace 'https://cloudhelpcenter.com' 'https://nexymhelp.com' --all-tables

15. After running the 5th command, verify that you get Success: message again and a table replacement number above at least 0, and then move to the next section.

16. You are done with the Terminal section, click on Disconnect and then the Back button to return to your hosting control panel main page

Update your WordPress Manager installation

1. Go to your hosting control panel

2. Click on the WordPress Manager button

3. Locate your source (old) website domain name WordPress Installation and click the down arrow V

4. Scroll down and click the Remove button

5. Click the Remove Installation button

6. Click the OK button on the Are you sure you want to remove this installation? popup

7. Click on the Return to WordPress Management button

8. On the WordPress Management page, click the Scan button

9. On the Import Installations page, click the Start scanning for installations button

10. You’ll see your new website name listed, click the Return to WordPress Management button

11. Your target (new) website domain name WordPress installation will now be listed

Please note, you can log in to your main domain name WordPress installation either through your WordPress Manager or by using the direct login credentials using your domain name wp-admin link, go here for details.

Remove the default ‘under construction’ page (troubleshoot)

Sometimes, after you’ve completed all the steps above, your website will show the following ‘under construction’ page:

If you see this page, instead of your website, follow the steps below to fix it.

1. Go to your hosting control panel

2. Click on the File Manager button

3. Double click on the domains folder

4. Find your domain name folder and double click on it

5. Double click on the public_html folder

6. Inside of your domain folder, look for a file called index.html

7. Right-click on your index.html and Remove it, here is an example of the process

8. Refresh your web browser page, you should now see your website

Disconnect your old domain name from the hosting control panel (optional)

If you no longer have any use for your old website name, you can disconnect the domain name from your hosting control panel.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel

2. Click on the Domains button

3. Check the box next to your domain name

4. Click the Delete button

5. Click the Confirm button

Cancel your old domain name registration (optional)

If you no longer want to keep the domain name registration for your old website name active, make sure to disable the auto-renewal. If your old domain name is registered at Nexym, go to: Cancel services and follow the steps under Domain Names.

If your old domain name is registered externally, you will need to submit the cancelation request at that provider.