DNS - Change Wordpress Site Name?

Question

I'm about to make a site go live, but I realized that Wordpress assigned the website name as the IP address under settings. When I try to change it, the website errors out. When I've tried to change the name in the past, it gives an error... so I've tried a few tactics documentation has directed:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL#Edit_wp-config.php

For the following methods:

update_option( 'siteurl', 'http://example.com' );
update_option( 'home', 'http://example.com' );

UPDATE `newprefix_usermeta` SET `meta_key` = REPLACE( `meta_key` , 'oldprefix_', 'newprefix_' );

I even deleted the .htaccess file. Nothing allows the site to change.

We need to make this website domain / DNS point live in a couple days, but I'm afraid if we flip the DNS pointer towards our new server, customers will receive an error instead.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to update all the places in the database that are using the original location. you can use the following tool to do so. There are others but I have found this one to be easy. Just remember to remove the files after you are done with it. I would run this in it's new location and leave the development version alone.

https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/

You will want to replace the URL string as follows. These are just examples and should be replaced with their own data. The // should be used.

Orignal String: //127.0.0.1

New String: //newurl.com