If you are rebranding your store or changing products, then a domain name change may be among your options. Read on to learn how to change your domain name in Magento 2.
What is Magento 2?
Magento 2 is a powerful eCommerce platform. As of April 2023, it has a power of about 8% of all eCommerce sites. Although designed for medium to large online stores, Magento 2 is a great platform for SMB owners who want out-of-the-box integration with PayPay and Authorize.net, as well as discerning SMB owners looking for quick solutions. climbing their tents.
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Why should you change your domain name?
There are several reasons why you might want to change your domain name in Magento.
1. Trade name change
Whether you want a name change to reflect a change in focus of your business or a court has ruled that you are infringing on a trademark, sometimes you need to change your business name. If your business name changes, it can often make sense to update your domain name to reflect that change.
Example: The World Wrestling Federation decided to change its name following a 2002 court decision that it could no longer use the initials “WWF” (and therefore was no longer allowed to use the domain name, wwf. com).
2. gTLD or subdomain changes
Although your gTLD has no impact on your Google search ranking, your customers may find a .com top-level domain name easier to remember than a .store top-level domain. Similarly, a simple domain or www subdomain might be easier for your customers to remember.
In addition, the consistent use throughout the site of a simple subdomain or a www subdomain can simplify your backend use of website cookies.
Example: www.cookiesbyolivia.com and oliviasonthird.com are easier to remember than web.cookiesbyolivia.com and store.oliviasonthird.com.
3. Production deployment
Some developers like to build and host sites with a domain name other than the domain name that will be used in production. When deploying the production site, it is important to remember to change the domain name in Magento 2.
Example: A developer can build and test a store using the URL olivia.magentostaging.com. They could change the domain name in Magento 2 to oliviasonthird.com when deploying the site in production mode.
Learn how to register your domain name here.
Steps to change domain name in Magento 2
Changing the domain name in Magento 2 is as simple as updating the base URLs.
The instructions below are for changing the domain name on a single store Magento 2 site using the admin panel. You can also change the domain using the command line or phpMyAdmin.
1. Go to the main menu of your admin panel
2. Go to the navigation menu
Select the Web tab.
3. Open the Base URL submenu
Open it by clicking the down arrow.
4. Update the Base URL field
Update the value by changing your old domain name to the new domain name.
5. Close the Base URL submenu
You can do this by clicking the up arrow. Then, open the Base URL (secure) submenu by clicking the down arrow.
6. Go to the Secure Base URL field
Update the value by changing your old domain name to the new domain name.
7. Click Save Settings
8. Test the new domain name
You can test the new base URLs both by browsing an existing product and by create a new temporary trial product.
Note: Although Magento is supposed to automatically update the cache, if your site now returns 404s when using your new base URLs, you may need to do this manually. empty your magento cache.
Don’t Forget: Update your DNS records when you change your domain name to make sure your new domain points to your Magento store. Please note that updating DNS records can sometimes be quick, but sometimes it can take up to two days. If you are a Nexcess customer, read our article on change domains and DNS records for more information and to use our DNS verification tool to make sure your new domain is working properly.
Now you know how to change your domain name in Magento 2
That’s all!
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