I am in going to be moving my main website to a new domain URL soon, and I'm wondering, since I'm going to be keeping the site on the same VPS with the same Hosting company, if I create a staging site, which is a direct and exact clone of my original site, on the new domain URL, will I be able to keep my wpforo forums and all content intact? Meaning when I clone the site and set it to go live and then delete the old site that the new one is cloned from, will my wpforo stuff still be just like it was on the old site?
Hi @david4 ,
Moving wpForo to a new domain is relatively straightforward because wpForo stores most data using relative slugs, not absolute URLs. Here's what you need to do:
Your wpForo forum and all content will remain fully intact after cloning and moving to a new domain. Here's why:
wpForo stores all its data forums, topics, posts, members, usergroups, settings in the WordPress database using relative slugs (like community, general-discussion, my-topic-title), not absolute URLs with your domain name. Forum URLs are dynamically generated at runtime using WordPress's siteurl setting combined with these slugs.
When you clone your site to the new domain and update WordPress's Site URL (Settings > General > Site Address), wpForo will automatically generate all its URLs using the new domain. No wpForo-specific migration steps are needed.
A few things to be aware of:
-
Attachment URLs: If your forum has file attachments uploaded through wpForo, their stored paths may contain the old domain. Most migration/cloning tools (like Duplicator, WP Migrate, or a proper search-and-replace) handle this automatically as part of the standard WordPress URL replacement. Just make sure your migration tool does a search-and-replace of the old domain to the new one across the database.
-
Cached data: wpForo keeps some cached statistics and sitemap transients that may contain old URLs. Please go to wpForo > Overview admin page, scroll down, find the [Delete all caches] button and click it.
-
Post content links — If users have manually typed links to your forum in their posts (like "check out this thread at oldomain.com/community/..."), those would need a search-and-replace. But this is a general WordPress concern, not wpForo-specific. Please read this topic: https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/just-migrated-wp-to-a-new-domain-how-to-change-urls-to-new-site/
Important Notes
- This process is for same WordPress installation moved to a new domain. If you're trying to merge two separate wpForo installations, that's much more complex and may require professional migration services
- Make sure your
/wp-content/uploads/wpforo/directory is properly migrated (avatars, attachments) - The
wpforo_urlvalue inwp_optionsshould also reflect the new domain
I've already explained this in many topics for different cases:
- https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/migrating-forums-database-to-a-new-server/#post-43682
- https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/migrate-wpforo-to-another-wpforo/#post-15116
- https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/moving-wpforo-to-another-database/#post-43415
- https://wpforo.com/community/?wpfin=tag&wpfs=move%20wpForo
