Update the own URL when you add an SSL certificate in WordPress with the WP-CLI

When you add an SSL certificate to a WordPress site, you have to update all the own references on the website, changing the ‘http’ string to ‘https’.

In this post I will explain how to do it with the ‘search-replace‘ subcommand of WP-CLI.

Backup

First I will make a backup.

$ mysqldump -uroot -p mydatabase > 20191014-mydatabase.sql

Search and replace

I will use the ‘search and replace’ command. I have to be in the WordPress root directory:

$ cd /var/www/example_com

Then I will execute the command with the ‘dry-run’ parameter, so I can see the output without executing the command:

$ wp search-replace 'http://www.example.com' 'https://www.example.com' --dry-run

+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------+------+
| Table             | Column                | Replacements | Type |
+-------------------+-----------------------+--------------+------+
| qwp_postmeta      | meta_value            | 1854         | PHP  |
| qwp_posts         | post_content          | 2049         | SQL  |
| qwp_posts         | guid                  | 4098         | SQL  |

You can see the number of replacements (8.001 updates) and in which tables it will be executed.

To execute the command you have to remove the ‘dry-run’ parameter:

$ wp search-replace 'http://www.example.com' 'https://www.example.com'