So I changed the domain to WPressureCooker.com.

I thought I’d share how I did it to show how to do it so you don’t have to worry about folks trying to get to your site through the old domain and getting a 404/”file not found” message.

The first thing I did was some research to find the best way to do this.

Quick disclaimer: This may not be the best way for your site.  But this worked for me.  Be sure to back up your database and files before proceeding.

I followed the Yoast.com site’s advice and created a robots.txt file, but ended there because I was not moving any files and he was giving instructions for an Apache server where I was using a Windows server hosting plan.

In my Godaddy hosting account, I set the new domain (wpressurecooker.com) to point to the same folder wordpressurecooker.com is pointing to, and waited for the status to go from Pending to Setup.

Logged in my site’s admin and went to the General settings.  There I changed the Blog URL and Site URL to the new domain name.

I installed the plugin, Domain-Change by Soz which creates the 301 Redirect for you that automatically redirects folks from your old domain to the new.  So if someone comes to your site by a link that goes to a specific article, the page comes up under the new domain.  Even my shortened Pretty Links worked.

I deleted the robots.txt file from my site.

Next came the stat tracking.  I use Google Analytics.  I was hoping that the 301 redirect will take care of most of the problems, but just in case, I made a change to my Google Analytics account and the Google Analytics for WordPress by Joost de Valk settings.  There is the possibility I did this wrong, but in Google Analytics for wordpressurecooker.com I set it to track “multiple top level domains”.  I noticed the code (that you would paste in if you didn’t use the plugin) changed where _gaq.push([‘_setDomainName’, ‘none’]); so in the plugin settings, I set Domain Tracking (which sets _setDomainName) to “none”.

I also have WordPressurecooker.com registered under Google’s Webmaster Tools.  That required me to verify the wpressurecooker.com domain, then for wordpressurecooker.com, I clicked “Change of address” under “Site configuration” I set the New URL for wordpressurecooker.com to wpressurecooker.com.  In the settings for wpressurecooker.com I set the sitemap URL.

It took me a lot longer to type this all out than to make the changes, so I think you will find it pretty easy.

So did I miss anything?