The website migration checklist

A website migration has a lot of small parts, and almost none of them are individually difficult. What causes trouble is forgetting one, or doing them in the wrong order. This checklist groups everything into four stages — before, during, on switch day, and the week after — so you can work down it rather than trying to hold the whole job in your head.

Before you start

• Take a full backup of the current site — files and database — and store it somewhere other than the old server.
• List everything that is not a file: mailboxes, forwarders, cron jobs, SSL certificates, DNS records for services you had forgotten about (verification TXT records, subdomains, MX records).
• Set up the new hosting account: add the domain, create the database and user, and match the PHP version the old host was running.
• Note the old host's DNS settings before you leave — the current nameservers and any custom records — in case you need to compare them later.
• Lower the TTL on the domain's DNS records a day or two ahead, so the eventual switch takes minutes rather than hours. See how DNS propagation actually works if this step is new to you.

While you copy the site across

• Upload the files into the web root of the new account, including hidden files such as .htaccess — most FTP clients hide these by default.
• Import the database into the empty database you created, using phpMyAdmin for small exports or the command line for anything too large for the browser to upload.
• Update the configuration file with the new database name, user and password — wp-config.php, .env, configuration.php or settings.php, depending on the platform.
• Recreate mailboxes on the new host if email is moving with the site, and copy existing mail across before DNS changes.
• Recreate cron jobs — they never travel with a file copy and are one of the most commonly forgotten items.

Before you switch DNS

Do not skip this stage. Add a temporary entry to your own hosts file so your computer alone loads the new server while everyone else still sees the old one, then work through the site properly.

• Home page and several inner pages load correctly, with images and styling intact.
• Any form that submits — contact, search, account login — actually works.
• The admin area logs in and behaves normally.
• For a store: adding to basket and reaching checkout both work.
• No mixed-content warnings, broken links, or database connection errors.

Full instructions for the hosts file step are in previewing a site with your hosts file, and a fuller testing pass is in testing a migrated site before going live.

The day you switch

1. Confirm the TTL is already low

   If you lowered it a day ahead as recommended above, the change will now spread quickly rather than taking hours.

2. Change the nameservers or the relevant DNS record

   Copy the values shown in your new host's control panel or welcome email — never type in figures from memory or from an old screenshot.

3. Remove the hosts file entry

   Delete the line you added earlier. Left in place, your own machine will keep loading the new server directly and you will never see a genuine DNS problem if one occurs later.

4. Check the site from a network you do not control

   Mobile data on your phone, with Wi-Fi off, is the fastest way to see what the rest of the world is now seeing.

The week after

• Keep the old hosting account active. Do not cancel it yet — some visitors are still being routed there until DNS finishes spreading everywhere.
• Watch for forms that stop sending, scheduled tasks that silently stop running, and email that keeps arriving at the old server.
• Check search-engine indexing has not changed and no pages are returning errors — see what to check after a migration.
• Once a full week has passed cleanly, take one final backup of the old account, then cancel it.

A note on scope

This checklist is written for a like-for-like move: same domain, same URLs, a different server behind them. If you are also changing domain, rebuilding the site's structure, or moving off a hosted website builder, treat this as the hosting half of a larger project rather than the whole thing — the URL and redirect planning for those situations is covered separately in moving to a new domain and moving off a website builder.

Working from the list rather than memory

A migration that fits in your head feels manageable right up until something interrupts you — a phone call, an unrelated urgent task, a day that simply runs long. Working from a written list rather than memory means picking the job back up an hour, or a day, later costs nothing: you can see exactly which stage you reached and what is still outstanding, rather than trying to reconstruct it from scratch.