Websites & Stores · Service 06

Move it carefully, or pick it back up.

Two related jobs. Migrations move a site to new hosting, a new platform or a new domain without losing the rankings and traffic you already have. Rescues take on a project someone else abandoned, broke, or built in a way nobody can maintain. Both start with an honest audit rather than a quote.

Redirects mappedRankings protected Nothing goes live untestedFull handover
Get an honest audit → Describe the problem
Old site → new site

Triage

Tell us what is actually happening

Migrations and rescues rarely arrive with a clean brief. They arrive as symptoms. Tick whatever matches and the panel will describe how we would approach it.

The part that gets skipped

Redirects are the whole ballgame

When URLs change, every link Google has indexed and every link another site points at needs somewhere to land. Miss them and the rankings you spent years earning quietly reset. Toggle below to see the difference.

Every old URL lands on its new equivalent
/services/web-design.html→/services/website-design/
/products?id=4471→/shop/ceramic-dripper/
/index.php/about-us→/about/
/blog/2019/03/seo-tips→/blog/seo-tips/
/contact-us.html→/contact/
Link equity carried through 100%

The illustration is simplified — real migrations often involve thousands of URLs, and the mapping is built from the server logs and search console data rather than guessed.

Expectations

What comes across, and what needs rebuilding

Being straight about this before we start is what stops a migration turning into an argument at the end.

Moves across

  • Pages, posts and media — content and images transfer with their structure intact.
  • URLs, via redirects — old addresses keep working and pass their value on.
  • Metadata and SEO settings — titles, descriptions and structured data carried over.
  • Products and orders — for stores, catalogue and order history in most cases.
  • Customer accounts — usually, though passwords often require a reset email.
  • Email and DNS — moved deliberately, with the mail path tested before cutover.

Needs rebuilding

  • Platform-specific layouts — a Wix or Squarespace design does not export; it is rebuilt.
  • Page-builder content — moving between builders means recreating pages, not copying them.
  • Forms and integrations — reconnected and retested against the new environment.
  • Anything undocumented and custom — has to be understood before it can be moved safely.
  • Analytics and tracking — re-implemented and verified, not assumed to follow.
  • Abandoned half-features — often cheaper to remove than to finish.

Rescue

The situations people call about

None of these are unusual. All of them are recoverable, and the first step is always the same: find out what is actually there.

Access

Locked out of your own site

No admin login, no hosting details, a domain registered to someone who has moved on. Usually recoverable through ownership records — and worth doing before anything expires.

Abandoned

A build that stopped halfway

We audit what exists, tell you what is worth keeping, and price finishing it against starting again. Sometimes the honest answer is that a restart is cheaper.

Compromised

Hacked, defaced or flagged

Clean-up, close the way in, restore from a known-good point, then submit for review. Hardening afterwards so it does not simply happen again.

Collapse

Traffic fell off a cliff

Usually a migration done without redirects, a robots file blocking crawlers, or a penalty. Diagnosis first — the fix depends entirely on the cause.

Fragile

Nobody dares touch it

A site where every update breaks something. We document what it does, stabilise it, and then modernise in stages rather than all at once.

Orphaned

Built on something obsolete

An old CMS, an unsupported PHP version, a plugin the author abandoned. We plan a route off it that does not require a big-bang rewrite.

Questions

Migrations and rescue, answered

Will I lose my Google rankings if I move my website?
Not if the migration is done properly. Rankings are lost when URLs change without redirects, when content is dropped, or when the new site is slower. Every old URL gets mapped to its new equivalent, the mapping is built from real data rather than guesswork, and we monitor search console for weeks afterwards to catch anything missed.
Can you take over a site another developer built?
Yes, and it is common. We start with an audit — what it is built on, what is custom, what is out of date, and what risk you are carrying. You get that assessment in writing whether or not you continue with us.
How long does a website migration take?
A straightforward hosting move can be done in a day or two, mostly waiting for DNS. A platform change is a rebuild with a migration attached, so it runs like a normal project. The difference matters, and we will tell you which one you are actually asking for.
Will my site go down during the move?
It should not. The new site is built and tested on a staging environment, content is synced last, and the switch happens once everything checks out. DNS propagation means both versions can serve briefly, which is why nothing that accepts orders is cut over without a plan for that window.
My site was hacked. What happens first?
Contain, then clean, then close the way in. That means taking a forensic copy, removing the malicious code, patching whatever was exploited, resetting credentials and restoring from a known-good backup where needed. Only then do we look at getting warnings removed.
What if you find the site is worse than expected?
We tell you before spending your budget, not after. The audit exists precisely so that a rescue does not become an open-ended bill. If the honest answer is that rebuilding costs less than repairing, you will hear that even though it is the less convenient answer for us.