Tips for a Smooth Website Migration

A website migration involves significant changes in regard to the website’s platform, URL structure, design, domain, host and/or server. Website migrations require significant planning, time, and resources. When something goes wrong, it could hurt your website traffic and revenue. Before planning how to migrate your website smoothly, let us understand common types of migrations first.

Types of Website Migrations:

• CMS Change: Different platforms often have very different features and technical capabilities. Moving your website from your current CMS to a new one, for example, from WordPress to Magento might require updating to a different version of WordPress as well. Be sure to think about whether moving to a different CMS is the only option, and if there is any way you can enhance your current setup to meet your needs.
• Protocol Change: Changing your website protocol from HTTP to HTTPS to improve web security.
• Subdomain Change: Changing your website from “www.yoursite.com” to “subdomain.yoursite.com”. It is common when businesses are trying to merge desktop and mobile versions of a website under the same URL.
• Domain Change: Changing your website URL from www.olddomain.com to www.newdomain.com. It is common when a business is rebranding and must move from one domain to another.
• Top-Level Domain Change: Changing your website URL from a .com to a .org, .net, etc., or vice versa.
• Site Structure Change: Changing the website architecture may dramatically affect the user experience and navigation of the website. It also affects the site’s internal linking and URL structure.
• Change Host/ Server: you can switch to another host if you are not satisfied with your server’s performance or your hosting conditions. Make sure you choose a reliable web hosting provider that offers an uptime guarantee and prevents downtime of your website.

To ensure a smooth website migration, there are some basic rules.

• Website migration should be carried out in a low-traffic time in order to minimize the impact if something goes wrong. Especially if your business is seasonal, make sure the website migration is done in low traffic season. It is risky to migrate in peak traffic season which may cause a big loss.
• Create a staging site to test everything thoroughly before migrating to your live site. If everything works fine, start moving your website piece by piece. Try not to migrate the entire site at once.
• Avoid mixing multiple migration types in a single move. If you want to change your web host, domain name as well as site structure, it is suggested to do it one step at a time.
• You should have a schedule about when the web migration should be completed. Keep everyone on track with a timeline of each task. Avoid extensive downtime of your website if possible. Otherwise, it will affect your website visibility in search engines.
• Inform your users in advance that you are going to migrate a website. Your website may experience some hiccups during migration. It is better to give your visitors a heads-up as it will directly affect their user experience.
• Always make a full backup of your website before making any major changes. Website migration is a serious undertaking that has a lot of potential issues and pitfalls. Prepare for the worst.

Many web hosts offer website migration services when you sign up for their web hosting plans. If you are too busy to migrate a website yourself, or not sure how to do it right, pick a web hosting provider that offers free migration services. There are plenty of reliable web hosts out there to provide free migration services. All you need to do is to sign up for their web hosting plan, ask for site migration and provide the required website details.

Dataplugs web hosting services come with free website migration services. Our migration experts will transfer your website files, emails, and databases to our web and email hosting service with great care. Simply submit your website and email accounts along with the necessary login and password. Our migration experts will handle the rest. Feel free to contact us by email sales@dataplugs.com to learn more about our web hosting services.