Install and test Wordpress website before pointing your domain

So you signed up for a new hosting for your website, your domain is still hosted elsewhere with some old content and you want to build a new website using Wordpress, you want to test it out before pointing the domain to our server, to do that we will:

- Install Wordpress using cPanel > 'WordPress Manager by Softaculous'
- Temporary change the Wordpress Site URL configuration of Worpress to run from a temporary URL.
- After testing, we will change Wordpress Site URL configuration back to the permeant domain name.

1. Locate your temporary URL:

You can access your hosting space before pointing the domain to our server using a temporary URL, you can find your temporary URL in your admin area of the hosting account, 'Advanced' tab, it will be in form http://server_host_name/~your_cpanel_user_name , here is a temporary URL example we will use through this article:

http://s82.etcserver.com/~gooduser/

2. Install Wordpress:

Install Wordpress from your cPanel > 'WordPress Manager by Softaculous'. in the 'Choose Installation URL' field, choose your domain name.

3. Modify Wordpress configuration:

After saucerful installation, we will need to change the URL of Wordpress to the temporary URL in step one, there are several ways to do that, you can do that using the Worpress Manger or by modifying Worpress files as follows:

Locate the Wordpress configuration file in /public_html/wp-config.php you can use the File Manager in cPanel to locate and edit the file

copy and paste the following in the top of the file:

define('WP_SITEURL','http://s82.etcserver.com/~gooduser');

Save the file and you are ready to check the installed Wordpress:

http://s82.etcserver.com/~gooduser/

and login to the admin area:

http://s82.etcserver.com/~gooduser/wp-admin

4. Update primalinks rewrite rules in .htaccess file:

Wordpress uses mod_rewrite rules to remove index.php from the generated URLS, these rules must be modified in .htaccess file as follows:

replace

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

with

RewriteRule . /~gooduser/index.php [L]

Once you finished your work, you can point your domain to our server and revert the changes you made to wp-config.php and .htaccess.