Moving a WordPress site is the sort of job that is either completely uneventful or the worst week of somebody’s year. The difference is almost entirely preparation.
What we move
- WordPress to different hosting, including the awkward ones with unusual server configurations
- Other platforms to WordPress — Drupal, Joomla, Squarespace, Wix, and a number of custom systems nobody has a name for
- WordPress to WordPress, when two companies merge and so must two sites
- Multisite in, multisite out, and single sites into an existing network
The part that matters
URLs. A migration that loses your URL structure loses your search traffic, and recovering it takes months if it happens at all. We map every existing URL to its destination before we move anything, and every one that changes gets a permanent redirect. We test that map on staging, and then we test it again after the move.
How the day goes
We run a full rehearsal on staging first, including the redirect map and a crawl to prove nothing 404s. Then we pick a low-traffic window, put the old site into read-only, do the final sync, flip DNS and watch. Content freeze is usually under two hours.
We keep the old environment running, untouched, for thirty days. Rollback has never taken us more than twenty minutes, and we have needed it twice in eleven years.
What it costs
A straightforward host-to-host move is $1,800 to $4,000. Platform migrations with content transformation depend almost entirely on how consistent the old content is, and we quote after looking at it. That look is free.