GUID URL Question

Question

I had a website that needed to be re-done, so I hosted a new dev site (not locally) with a temporary domain. The dev/new site was completed and I then moved the domain from the old site to the dev/new site. All seemed to work perfectly after the domain switch, except that the images/posts for the blog are taking forever to load and I could see in the browser when loading a post it was looking for the temporary domain and not the new domain. I checked the GUID column on the database and I see all the post_type and content etc. are still using the temporary domain URL. Will it be safe to use a plugin like Blue Velvet or an SQL querie to replace the temporary domain with the original domain without breaking the site?

I'm just a wee bit nervous to pull the trigger based on reading so many warnings to not touch the "GUID" column.

Answer 1

Background: The guid should be just what the name says: a globally unique identifier. A unique string or number, not related to a public address at all. However, some functions, namely for images, are still using it for URLs. There are plans to fix that somewhere in the future, see #6492.

For now, you can safely change the value of that field, as long as you keep the correct post ID. Search in other fields to to catch all references.