How to change the website URL in Joomla

This article describes how to change the URL for a Joomla website. You may need to do this, for example, if you migrate an existing Joomla site to a new server, and the site does not display correctly.

Changing the website URL

To change the URL setting for a Joomla site, you must modify the configuration.php file. This file contains many site configuration settings for Joomla.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Using your preferred text editor, open the configuration.php file in the directory where you installed Joomla.
2. Locate the line that begins as follows:

   public $live_site =

3. Edit the line with the correct site URL. For example, if your site were located at www.example.com, you would type the following:
   

   public $live_site = 'http://www.example.com';

   If the $live_site setting is blank, do not change it. Only change it if a domain name is already defined.

4. Locate the two lines that begin as follows:
   

   public $log_path =
   public $tmp_path =

5. If necessary, edit the paths so they match the complete path to the Joomla installation in your public_html directory.
6. Save your changes to the configuration.php file.