Having moved WordPress blogs before, the process is not as easy as it should be but it’s also not very difficult. That is, however, unless you’re using the Thesis theme from DYIthemes.

Hopefully this will save you from much grief. If you’re using that theme, you have to disable it first, the move it. And even still, if you re-enable the theme, you must edit some files before you do so.

I experienced this issue both moving WP from one directory on a site to the root directory, and moving the site from one domain to another. No amount of scouring through the database to find the old blog URL and changing it would do the trick. I dug, and I dug and I dug – eradicating all instances of the old blog URL. All to no avail.

When moving the blog, step #4 is to change the WordPress address under Administration > Settings > General and step #5 is the same for the Blog address. If you use the Thesis them and make this change, you will watch as the change immediately reverts.

You can make the change in the database itself and after you load a page on the site, check the DB again and it too has reverted to the old URI(s).

The answer? Check your theme files. The Thesis theme files update when the theme is enabled, hardcoding the site’s URL into the theme code. Do a search for the old URL, and you will find it in the theme code. Change it to the URL of the new/updated site, or disable the theme altogether.