Many web designers prefer to build their websites in test folders and when their development is over to move their Joomla applications to the root folder of their hosting accounts.
For the purpose of this post, let us presume that we have a Joomla 1.5 installed in the public_html/test folder in our account and we want to move it to the public_html directory so that it will be directly accessible through www.yourdomain.com. This change consists of the following steps:
1. Move all of the files and folders from your Joomla folder to the new directory. In our case from public_html/test to public_html
2. Reconfigure your application. You should edit your configuration.php file and make the following changes in it:
Change: var $log_path = '/home/user/public_html/test/logs';
To: var $log_path = '/home/user/public_html/logs';
Change: var $tmp_path = '/home/user/public_html/test/tmp';
To: var $tmp_path = '/home/user/public_html/tmp';
Change: var $ftp_root = '/public_html/test';
To: var $ftp_root = '/public_html';
Change: var $live_site = 'http://www.yourdomain.com/test';
To: var $live_site = 'http://www.yourdomain.com';
3. Remove the content of your cache folder (public_html/cache in our case)
Now when you reload your website it should be working flawlessly from its new location.