Drupal - Site transfer. Change absolute URLs in the database?

Question

I have content in drupal (Blocks, Pages etc.) where absolute links have been inserted. I moved the site and the urls in the blocks and pages are still pointing to the old domain.

How can I change this in the database? Which database table do I need to target? I want to do something like:

UPDATE table SET content = REPLACE(content,'www.domain.com/old','www.domain.com/new');

Thanks!

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 04 '15 at 09:15

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Drupal it self is not using absolute paths (like i.e. WordPress does) so moving "common" Drupal websites doesn't require any intervention like this. My advice is to always use root relative paths for internal links.

Basically you would have to replace ALL appearances of old domain with new one, so it would be best to export your database to sql file, do search/replace on that sql file and then import changed dump file to new domain database. Maybe clear all the caches before database export to reduce database size...

answered Sep 04 '15 at 09:15

MilanG

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Absolute URLs could be stored in caches. – VladSavitsky Sep 04 '15 at 11:34
P.S. You don't have to search for whole absolute paths...just search for old domain and replace it with new ones. Relative paths will remain the same. – MilanG Sep 04 '15 at 13:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

0

Backup your database first!
Install Adminer script and search whole database for previous (old) domain name. Or build SQL-query to search all tables if you like command line interface
See How to search and replace all instances of a string within a database? to know how to replace string in whole database.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

Community

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answered Sep 04 '15 at 11:33

VladSavitsky

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Isn't it easier to do search/replace trough database dump? – MilanG Sep 04 '15 at 13:20
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It's a 1st method described at page from step 3. This is not always best solution because size of database could be a very huge. – VladSavitsky Sep 05 '15 at 08:35
True, but it's worth trying. – MilanG Sep 05 '15 at 18:53

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 08 '15 at 05:55

Making this change to the database may not be the best practise, why don't you instead try using the base html tag within the head tag in the .html template file:

<head>
<base href="http://www.domain.com/new"
</head>

Refer to for more information on this tag: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_base.asp

Drupal - Site transfer. Change absolute URLs in the database?

3 Answers3