We’ve discussed what to do in the months leading up to the switch in Part 1.

Now let’s deal with the big week.

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1-2 Days Before Switch Time

Ready The Redirects - When the switch comes, it's your redirect rules in the old site's .htaccess file that's going to keep all of your old clients bookmarks and Google cache of your pages going to your current direction. Make sure your redirects are by individual pages; so if someone visits a page deep in your site that they get forwarded to the same page at the new site and not just forwarded to the new home page.

Backup All Email Accounts - Migrating emails is going to be the hardest or at least most time-consuming part of the actual server switch. Mitigate potential damage by getting backups of all email stores before the switch. Doing it from Outlook: https://www.lcn.com/support/articles/how-to-archive-imap-messages-in-outlook-2019/

New Site Menus - Make sure to edit links to your social media from your site, have them pointing to the new social handles.

Notify Clients And Contacts Of The Change - Think of this as a great marketing opportunity; a good reason to reach out to everybody not only about the change but to remind them that you're there. Bonus if these emails come from the new email address which helps warm up the domain.

Test Like Crazy - Have multiple people test all of the new site multiple times and on laptop, phone and tablet. Trust me, you'll have missed something until the last minute.

Warn Users That Email Will Be Down For A Few Hours During Weekend Of Server Switch - You're gonna have to have SOME small period where email is down to migrate old emails to the new one and switch your

Backup Any Databases - If you have any dynamic content powered by a database (or your running Word Press or some other database-powered CMS system), back up if your databases in advance of the switch.forwarders.

cPanel Or Host Server Configuration - If you’re on a site with cPanel or some other configuration tools on your host server, then run a backup. Backups are never a bad thing. Here’s instructions for cPanel: https://docs.cpanel.net/whm/backup/backup-configuration/




At Switch Time

Deploy New .htaccess File - Since your new site was already "live", officially installing the site forwarder is really the big move here.

Testing - Yes we tested the new content a few days prior to switching. Test it again.

Inform Google - Google needs to know of your new site. Google Search Console has a place to start: "Change Of Address Tool",

Move Emails For Each Email Account - Export full email accounts from the old server and then import them to the corresponding email address. Can take a little time.

Reverse The Email Forwarders - Self-explanatory, right?

If Databases - If you have databases powering your site, then now’s the time to go live with any databases with new content. After making this switch, test the site again! We had a couple of things in a database affecting our client’s website on a recent domain migration.

Change Logos/Names On Social Media - Easily done. Go ahead and make several announcements of the name change. Good marketing opportunity.


Good Luck

Should you need any help with mapping out a strategy, we've been in it before and again very recently. We're happy to consult.