So here's the general situation:
- I have been developing an update for an existing website, let's call it domain name "example.com".
- The url I have been using for development is "exampleshop.com".
- I am hosting this project on a droplet in DigitalOcean.
- The example and exampleshop domain names are both registered with a separate registrar
When I browse to example.com it does display the site, which leads me to think I've at least done all the DNS settings right. exampleshop.com displays a 404 error, which also makes sense.
The issues:
- When I try to browse to example.com/wp-admin, it automatically redirects me to exampleshop.com/wp-admin.
- Browsing to www.example.com also leads me to exampleshop.com instead, but I have set up a CNAME record for it.
- The SSL certificate (Let's Encrypt) is invalid on example.com because it refers to exampleshop.com
What I've tried:
- I've made sure there are no redirects or domain forwards set up on either domain.
- I've tried using the IP leading directly to the DigitalOcean droplet and adding /wp-admin to that
- I've tried using combination of using https versus http and using www. or not, same results.
- I've also tried out the top answer on this old question I found (changed the site and home url directly in the database) and checked it by doing an SQL select for all those values.
I have a few years of experience with launching and hosting websites, but this is only my second wordpress project and I cannot figure out why this is happening. I gave the DNS settings over 24 hours to update, should I just wait another day and hope for the best? Is there some connection between these issues that I'm missing?
Should things be bleak, I do have a DigitalOcean backup from four days ago and I did migrate my project to a file just before transferring domain names. Should I just wipe my DigitalOcean droplet and restart from a backup?
This is a project I'm building for work where I normally don't get to build websites (which I love to do), so I'd hate to make a bad first impression by struggling with this for so long. Any help is extremely appreciated!
