Before you begin you must know the difference in size between the old domain and new domain name.
For instance newdomain.com has a length of 13, while myolddomain.com has a length of 15.
Difference in size in this case is: 13-15 = -2.
This means that the serialized string shrinks with 2 in length. Meaning a string that was 144 in size, will need to become 142.
1) Always start at the top of the document and at the beginning of the line, then start recording a new macro
gg0
qq
2) Search for domain name to find the first match, note that the below example matches http, https and no protocol but not any email addresses
/s:\d\+:\(\(:\d\+:\)\@!.\)\{-}\/\/myolddomain\.com
- To shrink use:
ww<CTRL-a> - To increase use:
ww<CTRL-x>
4) Visually select our last search pattern so we can opperate on it, this way we can substitute the domain name
gn
:s/\%Vmyolddomain\.com/newdomain\.com
5) Stop recording and execute macro X amount of times until all domains have been replaced accordingly
q
999@q
6) OPTIONAL: if a website was developed in a subdirectory and used relative URLs to link to pages you can check for any links that need to be updated (it's best to use /c to confirm each replacement)
gg0
qq
/s:\d\+:\(\(:\d\+:\)\@!.\)\{-}\/subdirectoryname\/
- To shrink use: `ww<CTRL-a>`
- To increase use: `ww<CTRL-x>`
gn
:s/\%V\/subdirectoryname\//\//c
q
999@q