Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode

Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode means you can browse this post page but we are installing WordPress freshly behind. The main reason is basically to get a fresh WordPress because of huge usage, database often get cluttered for medium to bigger commercial blogs. Following the previous method Repairing WordPress Database sometimes not actually solves the problem fully. This method to perform Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode will keep your visitors supplying the webpages while you are actually upgrading or reinstall WordPress.

Mantra of Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode

Basically you have to make the whole WordPress frontend converted to HTML pages, just like we do by using WordPress Cache Plugins – Cache is not on the root. Its the .htaccess that plays the Tricks.

How to Perform a Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode

Its quite easy to perform a Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode but it will take time and we will suggest to test it on non important other website of you first.

WordPress is a content management system. Physically there is no directory which actually present like this :

Neither a php page. Its generated from database actively. This is the basic reason we use Cache Plugins. But the Cache Plugins needs PHP function to convert them, this is itself a server intense work. But the ultimate result is a faster frontend.

Second point is, a HTML page will always get more importance than any real or virtual webpage. If you want to test, simply create a index.html named file on your web site’s root and load the homepage – it will show that HTML page.

Clean Installation of WordPress : Step 1

There are many ways to convert thousands of pages, posts, tags, categories to real HTML pages. There is a Plugin named Really Static, that can serve the purpose. Just like Cache Plugins, it will take time to generate the pages, make sure by allowing a good time.

Before activating this Really Static plugin, switch off / deactivate all kind of Cache Plugins and make the comment system to off. Now depending on your settings of Really Static Settings :

The default path is :

where the HTML pages are saved :

Copy all the contents from here. Logically, if you put on the root, WordPress will loss control. This statement itself has no value on this guide itself.

There will be no change made in .htaccess. But what we need is a clean system, otherwise we would paste all on the root. Create a subfolder suppose named static and paste the contents. This is needed because when we will perform Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain, the plugin will get vanished.

Take a backup of only few tables minimally needed (but also keep a full backup in hand) and the full wp-content folder.  Follow the previous method Repairing WordPress Database Guide for this purpose.

In other words, you are taking sql backup of :

wp_commentmeta
wp_comments
wp_links
wp_postmeta
wp_posts
wp_terms
wp_term_relationships
wp_term_taxonomy
wp_usermeta
wp_users

And the wp-content folder. Open the .htaccess of the root. Take backup of this religiously. Delete everything from there, depending upon where your that static folder is, we are taking that its on the root, the .htaccess should be :

What we have done, we directed that, whatever the file is asked through browser with GET request, like in browser, it will show the old HTML Page and mask the URL. It will never :

But :

It depends on your server and your ability to modify accordingly whether it will work out of box or not.

The maximum loss can be of CSS. Test it before delete all old WordPress files. Instead of  Really Static plugin, you can use WP-Super Cache, do not deactive the plugin in that case, make sure your full website is cache and will not be flushed suddenly.

Do not delete wp-content folder in either case. You will delete other WordPress files and folders and run the installation script for fresh WordPress installation. Do not change permalink structure. Restore the old database properly. Delete the .htaccess and now change the permalink like you had. It will automatically make the proper .htaccess file. You can delete the static folder now. Done the Clean Installation of WordPress on a Live Domain without Maintenance Mode.

In case the above method fails, you can scrap your own website (you need to CHMOD properly, change .htaccess rules), Download a free software  WinHTTracker Website Copier and it will create a working HTML copy of your website. You have to upload it to the root and delete all the files.  Delete the .htaccess file at root  and do Clean Installation of WordPress and restore.