Web developers who have an experience with changing WordPress url address would know that after migrating the database, URLs inside of it will still refer to the old site. However, WordPress is widely known as a web platform that has a ton of plugins and therefore there are many tools that can assist you to import database easily. But, a tricky method is necessary for requiring the shortcut of changing every URL instance inside the database.

As it is described in the picture below that the old URL in the wp_options table, set as the value of the siteurl and home options, and it’s probably also embedded throughout several other rows and tables in the database. If you find this kind of old URLs may eventually prevent your site from running properly, then you need to change to the new URL, such as below:

In the image above, you will find that the site acme.dev will simply lead to a blank page. Below is given a technique to change all these URLs in the database.

Leveraging WP-CLI

Leveraging WP-CLI is not the only way to change the URLs in the database, you can run an SQL query to replace it, but I find that leveraging WP-CLI is a handier alternative compare to SQL query which is a workable solution, yet at the same time, is not convenient to do. Assuming you have installed WP-CLI and have the wp command accessible as the alias, navigate to the directory where your WordPress site files reside.

Then, run the following command:

wp search-replace ‘http://acme.com’ ‘http://acme.dev

The first parameter, ‘http://acme.com’, is the old entry to be replaced with the second one, ‘http://acme.dev’.

Not only the post_content column and wp_options table but also all the tables within the database will be searched by the command line. Then, it will replace every instance of the entry passed through the parameters of the command, like it is explained by the above screenshot that a total of 225 have been made through a simple line of command.

Moreover, we can use the wp search-replace command, not only for replacing URLs, but also any piece of value stored in the database. The operation can also be limited into a certain table by passing the table name as the fourth parameter, as follows:

wp search-replace ‘.jpg’ ‘.webp’ wp_posts

Bear in mind that taking this action means you have to install the WP-CLI first and it will replace the image extension from .jpg to .webp.