How do I test images in WP migration without Changing URLs?

[kimmiedawn]

I'm redesigning example.com on a subdomain of my own site, so at example.mysite.com. As part of the redesign, I am optimizing the site's images. I used Wordpress Importer to get the content to the development site, but I did not import the images. Instead, I added the images to the development site by copying and moving over the contents of example.com's uploads folder. The posts at example.mysite.com are showing the images, but they are pulling them from the original location. I tried adding the following code to wp-config.php under the (misunderstood?) impression that the image URLs would use the development site's domain:

1 define('WP_HOME', 'http://example.mysite.com');
2 define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.mysite.com');

I am not seeing any change and the images are still pulling from the original site. How can I test the images on the current site without actually changing the URLs in the database. (If I understand correctly, I could search and replace, but that is not what I am trying to achieve.) The original domain is not changing with the redesign, so there is no need to actually change the URLs. I just need to test the images, as I will be removing those that are not being used as well as optimizing the remaining images before moving the redesigned site over to the original domain.

[WilliamKammer]

If the images are coded into the website using "http://example.com/image.jpg" instead of "/image.jpg" then the images will always pull from example.com, instead if your test site.

If they were coded with "/image.jpg" then the code would pull from example.com when the page was there, and example.yoursite.com when you moved it over for testing.

[kimmiedawn]

I appreciate your response. I do not need to permanently change the urls, as the domain is not changing in the redesign. I just need to see that all the images I have edited are in place correctly on example.mysite.com. There must be a temporary/test solution.

[WilliamKammer]

It sounds like the URLs being used in the code aren't dynamic. There are two different ways to embed an image (and it's URL) on a page with html:

You can use a dynamic URL, where the domain will be whichever domain the page is on, like notice how there is no domain in front of the URL path, this means the domain will change depending on which website the code is on.

The other way, and the way it sounds like is being used on your site is This makes the URL definite, since all of it is defined. If you see that your images were put in with URLs like these, you'll need to make them dynamic to accomplish what you want to.