Help Centre / Domains And Going Live

Make A Domain Your Primary Address

Updated 2 October 2026

A connected domain reaches your site. The primary domain is different: it is the one address WordPress thinks of as its own, the one it writes into links, image paths, menus and emails. Until you set it, your site keeps calling itself by its platform address even though your real domain works.

This is the step that takes a site from “it loads” to “it is launched”.

Step 1: Connect The Domain First

You cannot make a domain primary until it has stopped saying pending on the Domains tab. If it is still pending, DNS is not pointing here yet. See connect a domain to your website.

Connect www and the root, then pick one of the two as your primary. Which one does not matter much, as long as you pick and stick with it.

Step 2: Choose Make Primary

On the Domains tab, open the row menu next to the domain and choose Make Primary.

A dialog opens, headed WordPress Primary Domain Change. It asks whether you want us to run a search and replace across the database, and gives you two buttons.

Step 3: Answer The Search And Replace Question

WordPress stores its own address in hundreds of places. Page content, widget settings, serialised plugin options, the URLs of every uploaded image. Changing the primary domain without updating those leaves the old address buried in the content.

Choose Yes, Run Search And Replace unless you have a specific reason not to. Choose no if you intend to run your own search and replace tool, or if a developer has told you the database holds something that must not be touched.

A backup is taken before the job runs either way, so you have a point to go back to whichever button you press.

Step 4: Watch It Finish

The page shows a running notice while the job works. It usually finishes in well under a minute, and the site stays online throughout. Caches are cleared for you at the end, so you do not need to clear anything yourself.

When it is done, the job reports how many links it rewrote. On a real site that number is usually in the hundreds. A number in single figures on a long-standing site is worth a second look, because it can mean the old address was not what you thought it was.

Step 5: Check The Site On Its New Address

Open your domain in a private window and work through it.

• The address bar stays on your domain as you click around.
• Images load rather than showing broken icons.
• The menu links go to your domain, not the platform address.
• The WordPress dashboard signs in at yourdomain.com/wp-admin.

Step 6: Decide What The Platform Address Does

Your site keeps its site-xxxx.oxyforge.net address. It is useful, so we do not take it away. By default it redirects to your primary domain, and a switch on the Domains tab turns that redirect off.

Once a custom domain is primary, the Domains tab shows a switch reading Redirects to yourdomain.com.

Leave it on for a normal live site, so there is one public address. Turn it off when you want to reach the site without going through your domain, which is handy for testing a change or for checking the site when something is wrong with your DNS. The change takes a few seconds.

If the platform address does not behave the way the switch says, check it in a private window. Browsers cache permanent redirects aggressively, and an older permanent redirect sitting in your own browser will keep sending you to the domain no matter what the switch is set to.

Step 7: Point The Other Domains Somewhere

Every connected domain that is not the primary redirects to the primary by default. That is the right setting for www versus the root, and for a domain you bought defensively.

If you want the other domains to serve the site under their own names instead, choose Serve As Alias from the row menu of any non-primary domain. It is one switch for the whole site, so every non-primary domain changes together, and the menu then offers Redirect To Primary to put them all back.

Troubleshooting

Links still point at the old address. The search and replace was skipped, or something was cached. Run Make Primary again on the same domain and choose yes this time.

Some images are broken but most are fine. A plugin is storing paths in a format the rewrite did not match, usually a page builder with its own cache. Clear that plugin’s own cache from the WordPress dashboard.

You cannot sign in to the dashboard after the change. Go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin rather than the old address, in a private window.

You picked the wrong domain as primary. Make the other one primary. The same dialog appears, the same rewrite runs in the other direction, and a backup is taken first again.

If the site is left in a state you cannot explain, the backup taken before the job is on the website’s backups list. See restore a backup, or open a ticket from the members area.