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?
AI-generated summary
In a discussion titled “How much does changing the subdomain/domain break things?” under the Support category, stephtara asks whether moving Discourse to its final domain/subdomain before creating content is necessary or if the change is trivial. pfaffman advises backing up the current domain and restoring after switching. stephtara decides to proceed with moving it to the final domain. Moin shares a helpful guide on changing the domain name. supermathie provides a detailed breakdown: some issues (like inbound links or email links) can be fixed with redirects; others (like federated logins, SSO, TLS certs, or container config) require reconfiguration; and some (like U2F tokens, Passkeys, or existing login sessions) will break unconditionally. The consensus leans toward planning the domain change early to avoid complications.
You need to make a backup on the old/current domain and restore after you’ve changed to the new one.
Right… hmm I’ll probably get cracking on moving it to its final domain then 
There is also a guide about this
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