Magento - How to Manually Change Base URL / Domain?

Question

I've done searches for this, but can only find answers on how to do this through the admin panel (which I can't reach).

I have a live Magento installation that I'm going to be doing some new development on.

So I'm setting up a development site on a subdomain of the main site's url (http://test.mydomain.com)

The problem I'm having is that somewhere in the Mage::run() bootstrapper, the site's getting redirected to the www subdomain.

I've changed the following 2 records in the DB:

mysql> select * from core_config_data where value like '%mydomain.com%';
| config_id | scope   | scope_id | path                   | value                         |
+-----------+---------+----------+------------------------+-------------------------------+
|         2 | default |        0 | web/unsecure/base_url  | http://test.mydomain.com/     |
|         3 | default |        0 | web/secure/base_url    | http://test.mydomain.com/     |

• I've also ensured that the 'local.xml' config is pointing to the new dev DB.
• I've also deleted the entire /var/cache
• I've also removed all htaccess subdomain redirects
• I've also restarted Apache.

No luck, still redirecting.

What am I missing?

Answer 1

So it turns out the problem was that Apache didn't have write permissions to the WEBROOT/var directory, so Magento was using its cache from the system /tmp directory. (thanks for the tip, Fiasco Labs!)

In case someone gets here from Google, I'll reiterate the steps...

How to Manually Change Domain in Magento

1. Update your core_config_data table to edit the two records for web/unsecure/base_url and web/secure/base_url
2. Delete the contents of WEBROOT/var/cache
3. Update / edit any .htaccess domain redirects you may have added
4. Restart Apache
5. Make sure Apache has write permissions to WEBROOT/var
6. If you created a new DB, ensure that the WEBROOT/app/etc/local.xml is pointing to it.
7. If you're using Chrome, clear your browser cache! (Chrome caches 301s)

That's about it. Cheers.

Answer 2

Try to use FLUSHALL command on redis-cli, maybe you have a cached database.

It worked for me.