Changing the Domain Name of a WordPress Mu Site

I downloaded the Multi-Site Manager plugin from http://wpmudev.org/project/Multi-Site-Manager

This plugin makes it incredibly easy to create a new site. You can clone the original site to a new site, and then transfer blogs between those sites.

Unfortunately, in my experience, it didn't quite work perfectly. Probably a rookie mistake on my part. It is probably best not to transfer the primary blog from the original site. That caused some very strange behaviour from WordPress.

Anyway I ended up hacking through the MySQL database manually editing all the URL references.

Aarrgghh!!

This was made worse by the extra half dozen or more users who had appeared overnight. Each user causes an additional 8 tables to be created in the MySQL database. Truly, everyone has their own playpen!

137 tables later all the references had been updated.

There was a problem with tags and references or more specifically Permalinks. I found I had to go in and reselect the permalinks options. As none of the existing users have complained about tags and categories I’m presuming that they have successfully followed the instructions I emailed through to them or haven't yet re-logged in.