Moving your WordPress website starts with agreeing what is actually changing. A Carlow business might want a new hosting provider, a different maintenance arrangement or a complete rebuild. Those are different jobs, even when they appear in one quote.
Use this checklist to prepare a transfer brief with your current and proposed providers. It focuses on decisions and responsibilities; your developer or host should confirm the technical procedure for your particular website.
Jump to: what is moving · accounts and email · testing and sign-off · transfer brief.
Write down whether the website address and individual page addresses will stay the same. A hosting move with unchanged URLs needs a different plan from a domain change or a rebuild that changes page paths. Google provides separate guidance for hosting changes without URL changes and moves with URL changes.
Ask the quote to identify which of these tasks are included:
Record each task as included, excluded or awaiting a decision. If you want a rebuild as well, use our Carlow website redesign planning guide to define that work separately.
List the provider, business account holder, renewal date and person responsible for each service. Include the domain registrar, DNS manager, hosting account, WordPress access, email provider and paid themes or plugins. Add payment gateways, booking tools and any other connected services.
Ask whether licences held by the outgoing provider can continue, need replacing or depend on that provider’s subscription. Confirm the position before cancelling an existing arrangement. Our website handover checklist has more account and renewal questions.
Keep passwords and recovery codes out of the planning document. Agree a secure access-sharing method with the people doing the transfer.
Confirm whether mailboxes are staying where they are or moving too. Ask the person managing DNS to check the email provider’s required records before changing anything. Cloudflare’s email-record guidance explains that mail-record values depend on the email provider.
Agree who will test sending and receiving business email, and who will check website-generated messages. Do not assume that copying WordPress also transfers mailboxes, historic messages or email subscriptions. Ask for those responsibilities and any separate charges in writing.
WordPress migration guidance begins with backing up the website files and database. WordPress also explains that a typical full recovery needs both the files and database. Ask what the backup contains, where it will be held and who can restore it.
Agree how changes made after the first copy will reach the new site. For a shop or booking website, ask specifically about new orders, stock changes, appointments and customer records. For an enquiry website, check where submissions are stored and how recent messages will be accounted for.
Record whether a pause in editing or transactions is needed, who approves it and how staff will be told. Use the WordPress backup checklist for the wider recovery plan. A copy made earlier in the week should not simply be assumed to contain today’s activity.
Ask for a test location and a named person to record issues. Google’s hosting guidance recommends preparing and testing the new environment before changing DNS. Agree who will control access to the test copy and keep it out of search results.
Choose tests that match how customers and staff use your business website:
For example, a retailer could make “test collection order reaches the agreed inbox” an approval item. This is an illustrative test, not a report of work completed for a client. Keep test activity separate from genuine customer transactions.
If URLs are changing, ask for an old-to-new address map and appropriate permanent redirects. Google’s URL-move guidance recommends server-side permanent redirects where possible, such as 301 or 308, and updating internal links. Check canonical addresses and the sitemap as part of that plan.
Google says the Search Console Change of Address tool is not used for a hosting-only move with no user-visible URL changes. Ask which checks apply to your move instead of treating every transfer as a domain change.
Agree who will retain Search Console access and verification, check that intended public pages are crawlable and indexable, and confirm that temporary test restrictions have not carried into launch. A transfer plan cannot guarantee unchanged rankings or uninterrupted service.
Agree who will make the switch, report progress and handle a problem. Google’s hosting guidance recommends monitoring the old and new environments and closing the old hosting only once traffic is being served correctly by the new environment.
Set written closure criteria with the providers. Include website checks, email checks, latest-data confirmation and any remaining services on the old account. Agree who can authorise a rollback and how activity received after the switch would be handled. Avoid cancelling a bundled account without confirming what else it supplies.
For each item, add an owner, an agreed action and the evidence needed to mark it complete.
Our Website Maintenance & Care Plans page explains that websites built elsewhere can usually be taken on after an initial review. The review identifies concerns and the appropriate level of care. Agree any transfer work and charges separately; do not assume a migration or email move is included.
Please note: content changes (text edits, new images, new pages or layout changes) are not included in maintenance plans and are quoted separately. This keeps the plans focused on technical upkeep and site stability.
We will agree exactly what is included before you start, so you know what you are getting for your yearly fee.
Send us your website address and a summary of what you want to move. Leave passwords out of the enquiry. We can discuss the existing setup and the scope that needs reviewing.
