Giving WordPress its’ own directory

A lot of WordPress users don’t realize they are able to put WordPress in any folder on their site and still have it use the root domain name for its’ location. This is a basic feature of WordPress that you are able to pull of from the start or after you’ve already installed it. There a few reasons why you might want to do this. It can make things more secure. Moving WP to a location other than your domain’s root is useful if you don’t want people to be able to see your admin area easily. It can also be helpful if you simply want to keep your root folder clear for other things.

If you have installed wordpress in a subdirectory you can make it accessible from the root directory by completing the following steps.

1. Go to your General Options page. In the box for Blog address (URL) change the address to the root directory’s URL
2. Click Update Options. (You might get an error message but don’t worry)
3. Copy the index.php and .htaccess files from the WordPress directory into the root directory of your site.
4. Open up index.php and find the line that says:
   require('./wp-blog-header.php');
   When you find this, change it to
   require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php'); (wordpress being replaced with the name of the directory your WP install is located.
   

There. Now that was easy, wasn’t it? What if you want to move an already installed version of WordPress into a new directory? This takes a few more steps, but it can still be accomplished without much difficulty.

• After creating the directory that you want to move WP into, go to your General Options page in wp-admin
• Change the WordPress URL to the new directory
• Complete steps 1 and 2 ( ignore errors) and FTP your WordPress files into the new folder
• Complete steps 3 and 4

There you have it. WordPress should now be safe and sound in the directory of your choice.

Written by Ryan Edmunds from CrunchPlay.com
Posted on June 3rd, 2009 and filed under WordPress
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