Before Moving a Website, Write Down Everything It Does

The site does more than it shows

A small business website is rarely just pages. It sends form emails, stores requests, handles logins, resizes uploaded photos, runs scheduled jobs and answers requests from its own admin. Some of those were added years ago and forgotten.

Make the list

Before moving anything, write down everything the site does. Every page and its address. Every form, where it sends and what it stores. Every account type and what each can do. Every email the site sends. Every scheduled task. Every outside service it talks to, such as payments, maps or ordering.

The list is boring to make and invaluable to have.

Watch it work

Documentation is never complete, so it helps to observe the real site. Logging the actual requests the site handles for a while shows what is really used, including paths no one remembered.

Decide what "the same" means

For most moves the goal is that customers notice nothing. That means the new site should answer the same requests in the same way. Writing that goal down makes it testable instead of hopeful.

Plan the way back

Every move needs a rollback plan: what to switch back, how long it would take, and what would trigger it. Usually it goes unused. Having it is what makes it reasonable to move a working site at all.