On the off chance that you actually cared, I’ve changed this blog’s URL. You will find the latest drek escaping from my vacuous soul at http://disorderedthoughtprocesses.com, and for once the domain name actually matches the title. This will be a transparent process, thanks to the beauty that is the Apache Web Server, and thanks to the beauty of Wordpress itself.

You would think that this would be something well-documented and easy to find, but not even the awesome powers of the Googlebot manages to get this on the first try. In case you actually want to know how to move your Wordpress blog from one server to another with the least amount of hassle, try this (you will need Wordpress 2.1 or greater):

1. Go to the Dashboard of your old blog and click on the ‘Manage’ tab.
2. Then click on the ‘Export’ tab.
3. Click on the ‘Download Export File’ button. This will save a large XML file to your hard drive which contains the entire contents of your blog, including entries, comments, and other uploaded files.
4. Go to the Dashboard of your new blog and click on the ‘Manage’ tab.
5. Click on the ‘Import’ tab.
6. Click on the ‘Wordpress’ link.
7. Use the file picker and find the aforementioned large XML file that contains the entire contents of your blog.
8. Click on the ‘Upload file and import’ button

Voila!

The one thing that worries me is the 7 MB limitation. I’ve only been using Wordpress for a year and a half now, and I’ve already gotten to about 4.5 MB. Hopefully a year and a half from now, this limitation will be fixed.

Oh, and if (1) the domain of your old blog will remain active, (2) you have shell access to your website, and (3) your setup allows the use of .htaccess files, the following will seamlessly redirect your readers to the new URL:

1. Delete or rename your existing .htaccess file. It generally resides in the root directory of your Wordpress installation, and will typically be invisible. In Unix and related OSes in which Wordpress generally runs, this means typing the following at the command line to delete the file: ` rm .htaccess ` Or you can use the following to rename the file: ` mv .htaccess whatever-filename-you-want `
2. Use your favorite text editor to create a new .htaccess file. For example: ` emacs .htaccess `
3. In this file, place the following line: redirect 301 / http://new-blog.domain-name.com/

Once you save the file, redirection should work right away, although apparently it takes Google a while to reindex your site, so you may see a significant drop in traffic.

(Sources: 1. .htaccess / 301 redirect an entire site to new domain 2. Apache module mod_alias.)