To move your sites domain from one site to another you need to into just update your domain mapping settings.
This only works if you site domain is already pointing to a site on CMS platform. If this is not the case please read about going live with your site.
Before you domain map the new site:
- Check for any referenced to the old site temporary domain in you new site. This is usually no the case for sites that were exported and imported.
- Make sure that your site privacy settings are set to properly.
- Do a final QA of the site before going live. A site Quality Assurance entails going to each of the pages and clicking around, viewing the site in a mobile browser and tablet.
Steps for domain mapping the new site
- Delete the current domain mapping setting on your live existing site.
- Then add the domain the the domain mapping setting the the current site.
- Done
Please note: that this can cause a momentary disturbance to your site visitors. So it might be a good idea to do it during time that your site is not being used as much. Such as weekend or early morning.
After you domain map the new site:
- Setup redirection rules. The urls of the pages might have changed, especially if your new site also involved a architecture change. Setting up redirection rules will redirect users to the appopriate on thew new site instead of seeing a 404 error. more on the redirection plugin
- Retire the old site. ( Its a good idea to think about what you want to do with the old site. ) It is suggested that you changed the privacy setting to be at least not indexable by search engines.
- Have a party you just launched a new site!