# How much does changing the subdomain/domain break things?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** domains
**Created:** [December 14, 2025, 10:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269 "2025-12-14T10:50:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@stephtara](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stephtara)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2025, 10:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269/1 "2025-12-14T10:50:47Z")
I have Discourse set up but it’s not at the domain/subdomain it will go live at. I’m still thinking about the choice of subdomain. Now that I’m starting to configure things, I’m wondering how much changing the domain/subdomain is likely to break things. Should I hurry up and get Discourse in its forever home before I create too much content and configure settings, or does it not matter because the change of domain is trivial?
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2025, 10:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269/2 "2025-12-14T10:53:32Z")
You need to make a backup on the old/current domain and restore after you’ve changed to the new one.
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### Author:  [@stephtara](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stephtara)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2025, 10:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269/3 "2025-12-14T10:56:44Z")
Right… hmm I’ll probably get cracking on moving it to its final domain then 😅
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2025, 10:59am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269/4 "2025-12-14T10:59:19Z")
There is also a guide about this
> [@Change the domain name or rename your Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-the-domain-name-or-rename-your-discourse/16098):
>
> bookmark This guide explains how-to change the domain name of your Discourse site, and includes information about setting up DNS changes, editing configuration files, updating site settings, and correcting social logins and post content to reflect your new domain name. warning This guide is for self-hosted Discourse instances that were installed using our [installation guide on GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md). If you are [hosted by Discourse](https://www.discourse.org/pricing), please see [Configure your domain name for hosted Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-your-domain-name-for-hosted-discourse/21827) for specific …
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2025, 4:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-does-changing-the-subdomain-domain-break-things/391269/5 "2025-12-14T16:32:34Z")
> [@stephtara](#):
>
> how much changing the domain/subdomain is likely to break things
A list of considerations for changing site hostname is probably a good idea!
Off the top of my head:
- things fixable with a host redirect:
- inbound links
- one-time login links
- links in emails
- search engine indexes
- things that will or probably will need reconfiguration:
- federated logins
- SSO
- TLS cert
- container definition
- things that will unconditionally break:
- U2F tokens
- Passkeys
- existing login sessions