Service Migration
Host moves, platform migrations, headless migrations. Complete redirect maps, SEO data preserved, cutover in low-traffic windows, thirty days of Search Console monitoring after launch.
Why this matters
The site looks the same. Editors are happy. Stakeholders sign off. Then traffic drops 40% by week two and nobody can explain why. The redirect map missed a pattern. The schema migrated but the OG images did not. The canonical tags pointed to the staging URL. Cutover happened during the EU morning rush.
Migration is not a developer task. It is an SEO task with a developer component. We treat it that way. Redirect map first, SEO audit second, cutover plan third, monitoring fourth. Code is the easy part.
A migration in motion
The phase flow we run for every migration. Inventory, audit, scoped fix, staging rebuild, decision gate (rollback or cutover), monitor for 30 days. Each phase observable. Scroll up and back down to replay.
What we migrate
Host moves, platform migrations, headless migrations. Same rigor, same redirect map discipline, same thirty days of post-launch monitoring.
01
Sitemap from the old site, every URL classified, every URL mapped to a new destination. No 404s on day one. We validate the redirect map against the existing sitemap before cutover.
Zero broken links from the launch tweet.
02
Title tags, meta descriptions, OG images, JSON-LD schema, canonical URLs, robots directives. All migrated as-is or improved. Yoast and RankMath data exported and re-imported correctly.
Rankings hold through the cutover.
03
Posts, pages, custom post types, taxonomies, ACF fields, Gutenberg blocks, media library, comments, users. Every editorial surface that exists today exists tomorrow.
Editors notice nothing changed for them.
04
Search-replace with WP-CLI, not a string-by-string MySQL dump edit. Serialized data preserved. URLs updated everywhere they live (post content, options, meta, custom tables).
No half-migrated URLs in production.
05
DNS or Cloudflare Worker route flip during your slowest hour. Rollback plan ready. Monitoring active before, during, and after the flip. We do not flip and disappear.
Cutover completes without customer-visible downtime.
06
Coverage reports, Core Web Vitals, manual actions, mobile usability. Anything Google flags in the first thirty days gets fixed under the migration scope, not as extra billable.
Migration ends when SEO is stable, not when DNS flips.
1:1
URL mapping agreed and redirect-tested before a migration goes live
Ranking loss in a migration is almost always a URL that quietly stopped resolving. We test every one against the old sitemap before cutover, not after.
The redirect map
We export the existing sitemap, classify every URL, map every URL to a new destination, and validate the map against the live site before cutover. No 404s on launch day.
# _redirects (Cloudflare / Netlify)
# Generated from old → new URL map, validated against sitemap.xml
/old-blog/:slug /blog/:slug 301
/category/:cat/ /blog/category/:cat/ 301
/products/:sku /shop/:sku/ 301
/services/wordpress-development /services/wordpress-plugin-development/ 301
/about-us /team/ 301
# Catch-all for old query strings (legacy /?p=123 style)
/ /blog 301 Conditions: query=p
# Final fallback (404 -> custom page)
/* /404 404
Process
01
One to two weeks. Sitemap export, URL classification, SEO data inventory, redirect map drafted, schema audit, plugin compatibility check. Output is fixed price quote.
No surprises mid-migration.
02
Two to six weeks depending on content volume. Database migration, content verification, redirect map tested against live URLs, SEO data verified, staging URL signed off.
New site is correct before cutover scheduled.
03
Cutover in a low-traffic window. Thirty days of Search Console monitoring, Core Web Vitals tracking, error log watching. Issues flagged in this window fixed under the migration scope.
Migration ends when SEO is stable.
Where you are coming from
The content move is rarely the hard part. What costs you is the thing that platform does not export, and the URLs you lose on the way out. Here is what actually goes wrong, by source.
Wix does not give you clean exportable content. Pages have to be rebuilt rather than imported, and the URL structure changes completely, so the redirect map is the whole job.
The XML export covers posts and pages but drops galleries, product data and most layout. Anything built with blocks needs rebuilding in Gutenberg.
The importer handles posts and comments well. Labels do not map cleanly to categories and tags, and the /YYYY/MM/ permalink shape needs redirecting or you lose every ranked post.
No usable export. Content comes across by scrape or by hand, and the site structure usually needs rethinking rather than reproducing.
Members, groups and activity have to land somewhere real. We move these onto BuddyPress and keep profile data and group membership intact, which is the part most migrations drop.
Content types map to post types, but taxonomy, entity references and multilingual setups rarely map one to one. This is a data-modelling job before it is a content move.
Articles import reasonably. Extensions do not, so anything a Joomla component was doing has to be rebuilt as a plugin or replaced.
Usually this means the front end, not the CMS. Headless keeps WordPress as the editor and replaces what visitors see. If you genuinely want off it entirely, we will say so and help you leave cleanly.
See headless WordPressWhat it costs
Content alone and a move that carries users, orders and history intact are the same sentence and very different projects. Here is what moves the number.
What moves the number
Small, well-defined work is usually better handled as an hourly block than scoped as a project, and we will say so rather than inflate it into one.
Rough idea to delivery
Quick enquiry
Tell us what you need in a line. We reply within four business hours, and the discovery call is free.
Prefer the full form? Start a project
Common questions
Three categories. Host-to-host (WP Engine to Kinsta to Pressable to managed VPS). Platform-to-WordPress (Squarespace, Shopify, Drupal, Joomla, Webflow, custom CMS). WordPress-to-headless (WP backend stays, Astro or Next.js takes the frontend). All three with the same rigor.
Three things. Complete redirect map (every old URL accounted for). SEO data preserved (titles, descriptions, schema, canonical). Cutover during low-traffic windows with thirty days of Search Console monitoring. Last six migrations shipped without ranking loss.
Yes. Orders, customers, subscriptions, downloads, license keys, BuddyPress profiles, friendships, activity, groups, forums. We migrate the data and verify it before cutover. WooCommerce migrations require extra QA time, quoted in discovery.
Typically zero customer-visible downtime. The new site goes live behind a staging URL or Cloudflare Worker route. We flip DNS or routes during a low-traffic window, the old site stays available as a fallback, customers see no interruption.
Yes. The new site lives on a staging subdomain or behind a Cloudflare access policy until you sign off. Editors can preview, content team can audit, stakeholders can approve. Old site keeps serving traffic.
Host-to-host migrations are scope-dependent. Platform-to-WordPress migrations are sized depending on content volume and complexity. Headless migrations quoted as part of the headless build. Discovery call is free.
Where to go next
Ready to migrate without losing traffic?
Discovery call is free. Fixed-price quote within 48 hours. Migrations are scope-dependent.
WBComDesigns is amazing. The WP plugins and themes are of top notch quality with lots of features and updated very frequently. Supports are very responsive and helpful. I use Reign with TutorLMS, and the experience is surprisingly smooth.…