Wordpress on temporary URL

How to develop your new Wordpress site on a temporary URL

When transferring your WordPress installation to Fast2host, or creating a new Wordpress site when your domain is currently live elsewhere, you may need to use the temporary URL. This temporary URL will allow you to access your site before the nameservers have ben changed to ours. 
A few of the symptoms or issues you may be running into are:

• Domain name doesn't resolve to my Fast2host account yet.
• Images or themes don't show up, just the text.
• Unable to log in to Wordpress dashboard, because logging in wants to take you to a url with your real domain name in it.
• Changing your settings to allow you to view your WordPress site before yoour domain name resolves?

Changing to the temp URL

This requires a little MySQL trick. It's two simple edits in the database.

First, make sure that your WordPress installation is complete, and you know the name of the database. If Installatron installed WordPress for you, it's likely the name of the database is something like: username_wp1

Next, log into your cPanel. Look for the Databases section.

Select the icon named phpMyAdmin (looks like a sailboat.)



Once here, you need to select the database name on the left. (i.e. "_wrd1")

This will display the names of the Tables to the right.

Now there are icons to the right of the tables. The First one is called "Browse". Click "Browse".

Next, the database entries are listed in columns and rows. You want to select the pencil icon (for Edit) on the left for the top row (option_name is "site url")

Once you've clicked the pencil icon, you will see your domain name listed something like this:

You want to change that to something like this, using the format http://site-ip-address/~cpanelaccountname/

Once you've changed the URL, down at the bottom there is a "Go" button. Select the "Go" button.

Select the Next button to go to the next page

Look for the option_name home




Again, select the pencil icon  to Edit.

Make the same URL change here as you did for siteurl earlier. And click the "Go" button.

Visit your Temporary URL (e.g. http://74.220.219.65/~examplec/) for your site, and all the images will show up just fine.

Once you've changed your name servers so your domain name resolves to your account, you don't have to go back into phpMyAdmin to make the change again.

Log into your WordPress Admin Panel

Click the tab "Settings". Here you will see WordPress and Site address (URL):



Change this to your domain name with any folders required, and you're back to normal.