Changed WordPress Address Now Can’t Login

Posted by Jeff

on February 18, 2009

So you were messing around with your WordPress blog and changed the WordPress Address (url) and now you can’t login and the blog is all messed up. That setting in the WordPress general settings menu shouldn’t be changed if you don’t know what it means. It is to specify the location of the WordPress files on your domain. You can’t specify a different domain name either! You can use it to move the files to a different directory but there are additional steps needed to do it the right way. This WordPress guide will show you how to fix the problem.

You will need to get into the hosting account and change the WordPress address back to the original location in the database. Get into the hosting account and look for the phpMyAdmin or the MySQL Database menu. Once in phpMyAdmin you may need to click the drop-down on the far left to choose the correct database if you have more than one. Please don’t ask how to get into phpMyAdmin on your hosting account, I couldn’t possible cover all the different hosting account options available. Some are very easy and some make it next to impossible to get into or figure out.

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When the list of tables shows on the left click the wp-options table to open it on the right.

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Next click the Browse tab on the top.

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After you click the browse tab a list of the options will open, the one to edit is called siteurl. Click the pencil icon next to it to open the editor.

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Now you should see the URL that you managed to blunder into the WordPress dashboard general settings menu. Simply change it back to the correct location of where the WordPress files are. Scroll down and make sure the Save radio button is ticked and then click the Go button.

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Now you should have everything back as it was before you decided to make the change. If you want to move the location of your blog or the files check out how to do it the right way here: Moving WordPress

Here is another similar guide that may help: tamba2.org.uk

Similar Posts:

WordPress Guide

Tags: Advanced WordPress Guide, Customize Wordpress

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Comments

Comment by ลิงกินผัก on February 19, 2009 @ 1:28 am

In another way is editing in wp-config.php by add this line

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://yourdomain.com/WordPressFilesLocation’);

this method is overide WordPress URL in database and Easy to edit.

AbbyCookie Replied:
January 7th, 2010 at 11:34 pm

Hi! I did this to my blog and can’t fix it. Been working on it for hours. Can you tell me exactly where to add the “define” string on the wp-config.php page?

Jeff Replied:
January 8th, 2010 at 10:16 am

This post is about editing the database, it has nothing at all about editing the wp-config.php file.

Comment by comment draguer on February 19, 2009 @ 6:03 am

Thanks for the good explanation !

Comment by Chris on February 19, 2009 @ 5:57 pm

I really appreciate the comment – adding that single line of code to my WP-config.php file was easy. I still haven’t managed to get into MySQL through my web host.

One tip – when I copied and pasted the code, the single quotes translated wrong or something. I had to delete them an retype the regular single quotes. After that, it was a breeze.

define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://www.domain.com/WordPressFilesLocation’);

Comment by John on February 20, 2009 @ 4:52 pm

I really liked your article and would like to link to it from my website: http://www.BlogProducer.com

Please let me know if that is possible!

Jeff Replied:
February 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am

John I don’t know of many people who don’t welcome links pointing to their site or blog.
Sure link to it but don’t copy it!

Comment by Blogs on February 21, 2009 @ 11:50 pm

Very nice guide, I’m going to add this link to my wordpress FAQ.

Comment by kichus on March 4, 2009 @ 11:38 pm

Thanks a lot. It saved my life…

Comment by FunMahoL on March 6, 2009 @ 9:26 am

sounds very informative.well i have seen that many webmaster who messup with thier database with doing wrong thing are responsible for themselves coz they don’t take backup.My advice is to always take a backup of your database if you are doing anything which you don’t know what it going to do,In this way you can safely jump back if anything messed up!

Comment by handre on March 11, 2009 @ 12:25 pm

thanks dude, this would have been a head scratch to figure out.

cheers

Comment by PHATnames on April 28, 2009 @ 9:53 pm

Great! directions, Thanks alot

Comment by karen@karenskeepsakes.com on April 28, 2009 @ 11:26 pm

Thank you, Thany you! I thought I was a goner when I messed up my blog URL. A few simple steps and about 5 minutes and what I have been trying to fix for 2 days was done. The insutructions were extremely easy to follow. I should have known that a “Jeff” would have had the answer (My wonderful husband is also named Jeff!)

Comment by Zodiac Pool Cleaners on May 10, 2009 @ 12:39 am

Great post. I had a similar problem on my “pool” related blog. I will try this method. Thanks for sharing.

Comment by Justin Cooke Customer Service Management on May 12, 2009 @ 11:37 am

Appreciate the explanation…very clear, thank you!

Comment by Oliver on May 17, 2009 @ 9:14 am

Thank You !

You saved my life and webpage

Comment by Amazon Best Deals on June 6, 2009 @ 2:05 am

This happened to one of my friends. and he’s still looking for an answer. He’s so worried about his e-commerce site. I think your tutorial might help him. I’ll recommend your site to him. Thanks for helping.

Comment by Mariola on June 14, 2009 @ 9:14 am

thank you thank you thank you!! i was so panic when i couldn’t access the admin area! I thought the worst that I have to start again from scratch to create a new blog! Thank god I found this site! Now all the problems resolved

Comment by Deniel | ecommerce web hosting on June 15, 2009 @ 2:02 am

it sounds like very weird but in real it ism ore than that. I had done that mi stake almost an year ago and it was terrible to restore that. Even it took my 2 full days to discover that but I am happy that others can find such posts to solve the problem.

Comment by Designer Sunglasses on July 13, 2009 @ 2:35 pm

I really liked your article. thank you thank you thank you very much!! My advice is to always take a backup of your database if you are doing anything which you don’t know what it going to do,In this way you can safely jump back if anything messed up!

Comment by Pool Table Store on July 15, 2009 @ 11:09 pm

Thanks a bunch for the explanation. The experiment I did yesterday proved to be a disaster. Found my self stuck out of my own blog. Appreciate the explanation. You saved my day. Cheers

Comment by John on July 31, 2009 @ 10:44 am

Worked like a charm! Thanks a bunch! =D

Comment by Beth on August 2, 2009 @ 5:22 pm

Jeff,

Consider yourself hugged and kissed. I was about to cry! Now that I have things back to “normal” I’m off to read about how I should have gone about it in the first place. You’re my hero of the day!

Comment by hit song on August 6, 2009 @ 11:58 pm

Neat. I almost pulled out that stunt. Didn’t know it will cause a problem like that. Really appreciate it.

Comment by Val on August 16, 2009 @ 3:41 pm

Thank you so much for this advice. I thought I had lost the website completely as I tried to change the URL from http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com/wordpress to http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com. I thought I followed the instructions in wordpress, but kept getting the 404 errors “file not found”. I deleted all my changes, but still got the error. Now that I am back to the original settings (thanks to you), I am nervous to try again, because I am not sure where I went wrong. Can you see where I went wrong. Thanks so much.

Val

Jeff Replied:
August 16th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

Val you need to do a few more things to move the blog to the main domain. I have a guide here:

Move WordPress Blog To Main Domain

Val Replied:
August 17th, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Thank you for this Jeff. I followed the instructions (or at least I thought I did) but with no luck. I am not sure where I messed up. Everything was in http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com/wordpress. I want a website (with static pages)at http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com and my blog at http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com/blog.

On the General panel, the wordpress address is http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com/wordpress. The blog address is http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com. I am assuming that your use of “blog” is equivalent to “website”.

I created a “blog” folder.
Copied the index and .htaccess files to the “blog” folder.
Changed the index file to read, require (./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’);

Didn’t rename the old index files as they are .php files and not .html (as your guide indicated) so I was nervous.

Went to pages, create a new one. Then to settings and . . .

Nothing great happened. I have the page not found error. and the home page (welcome) goes to the Apache site. I have no idea where I went wrong. do you?

Thanks so much.

Val

Comment by Val on August 17, 2009 @ 5:39 pm

Update. I solved the first problem. Moved the index and .htaccess files out of “blog” subdirectory and into the main directory and http://www.rethinkingyourwor.com showed up. It was a beautiful thing. Not so with the blog. When I go to http://www.rethinkingyourwork.com/blog I get a blank page. What did I do?

Thanks again.

Val

Jeff Replied:
August 17th, 2009 at 6:02 pm

I don’t know why you moved anything to or created a blog directory. I don’t think I understand exactly what you are trying to do.

Sorry but I need to draw the line on this one here. I don’t do forum-type consulting in the comment section.

Comment by Ryan on August 19, 2009 @ 3:26 pm

Just wanted to say thanks. I blundered in – you clearly and concisely guided me out. I’ve added you to my feed for future accidents caused by geek impairment.

Comment by kimski on September 1, 2009 @ 6:22 am

Thank-you – exactly what this muppet needed to know – worked a treat!

Comment by Rich on September 3, 2009 @ 3:17 pm

Jeff,

I changed both the Wordpress Address and the Blog Address to a different URL. I was able to follow your directions above, but I am still not able to access my blog right now.

I’m not sure if it is because the Blog Address got changed too. Is there a way to change that as well?

Thanks,

Rich

Jeff Replied:
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm

Its all spelled out in the post, look over your settings again.

Pingback by Mark Johnson Music & Media » Fix URL options in Wordpress site on October 4, 2009 @ 4:35 pm

[...] Today I was working on a Wordpress site and accidentally added an extra “w” to the URL settings…..so, after saving the changes the site was hosed and not working. In order to correct the problem and fix the blog, I found this article to repair URL reference in the db – http://www.wordpressmax.com/wordpress-guide/changed-wordpress-address-cant-login [...]

Comment by matt on October 14, 2009 @ 3:41 am

this article saved my ass… thank you!

Comment by samual @ reverse address search on October 20, 2009 @ 12:36 pm

Thanks for the interesting post. With this post I was able to fix wordpress situation. I look forward to more from you in the future.

Comment by Sebastian on October 26, 2009 @ 11:17 am

THANK YOU FOR THIS.

Comment by Bowling Tips on October 27, 2009 @ 10:12 pm

Weirdly I too had done the same mistake. It’s funny that so many people do a mistake like that. Anyway glad I found his article. I was able to solve the whole thing up. Thanks. Cheers

Comment by Megan on December 12, 2009 @ 1:15 am

Thanks for saving my bacon! I know this is an older post but it gave me just what I needed right after screwing up a site I just posted! Thanks!

Comment by Kamahl on December 21, 2009 @ 8:15 pm

Thank you. This is the exact information that I needed. Thank you again this really has save a lot of time and hours of frustration.

Comment by Jeff on January 10, 2010 @ 4:30 am

Your a life saver! Thanks so much.

Comment by BB on January 13, 2010 @ 10:51 am

Thanks for saving my life!!!!

Comment by Lianne on January 22, 2010 @ 6:18 am

Thank you so much for this well explained tutorial. I wish more support was as clear as this. I ended up losing a whole blog at one point because of some badly phrased advice (from my host provider more worryingly!!) and because i’d only just created it and had no backup i had to reinstall and reload the whole thing. Incredibly frustrating!

But this….. well it probably made my day and saved one of my more established blogs from disaster. Thank you!

Comment by Flimsy on February 3, 2010 @ 3:49 pm

Thank you so much. I could have cried when I realised I couldn’t login anymore. You have helped me out. That’ll teach me for playing around with stuff I don’t know well enough!!!

Comment by Tazed on March 2, 2010 @ 9:10 pm

Hey Thank you very much…

At first I thought my blog was hacked, but when I realise I can see the blog files in my cpanel and no changes were visible I knew I did something wrong.

Anyhow your tip worked, and thanks to you I can now access my blog once again and I can begin to continue to edit my blog again and add articles, etc.

I have now added this site to my favourites and will come back and support where ever I can…

Comment by GReg Gazin on March 4, 2010 @ 12:16 pm

Thank YOU – It worked like a charm. The interface looked a bit different, but the specific command info and locations were the same!

Kudos!

Drive-By comments will be deleted! Like "Thanks for sharing", "Nice post", or any other text that doesn't contribute to the discussion. If you ask a very specific question about your particular WordPress theme, it will probably be deleted. I can fix your WordPress site but for a price. If you ask a question like "Why don't my blog work right", it will be deleted. If you ask a question about your WordPress site without a leaving a link to it, it will be deleted. The point is to ask questions and or comment on the the actual content of the post, and to please use some common sense. All comments are moderated and will appear when approved. Thank you.