Checklists for planning and executing website and domain migrations.
Whether you're moving from WordPress to Shopify, migrating domains, rebranding a site, or handling M&A technical transitions. This repository provides structured checklists for the work.
Each checklist covers pre-migration planning, redirect mapping, technical preparation, launch execution, and post-launch monitoring. The steps are written for engineers, SEO practitioners, and project owners who need to track the work.
| Checklist | Covers |
|---|---|
| Domain Migration | Changing domains while minimizing traffic and ranking loss |
| WordPress Migration | Moving off WordPress to another platform |
| Shopify Migration | Migrating to or from Shopify: product URLs, collections, checkout |
| Platform Rebrand | Rebranding with URL structure changes, whether phased or hard cut |
| Mergers & Acquisitions | Combining or splitting websites during M&A |
| HTTPS Migration | Moving from HTTP to HTTPS and checking for mixed-content issues |
Each checklist includes:
- Phase-by-phase execution steps with checkbox tracking
- Common mistakes and gotchas (from real-world experience)
- Platform-specific edge cases and workarounds
- Redirect mapping strategies and templates
- Pre and post-launch verification steps
These checklists are written for engineering leads, SEO managers, agency practitioners, and anyone responsible for executing a website migration. They assume you have basic familiarity with web infrastructure (DNS, SSL, web servers, CMS platforms) but don't require deep expertise in any single platform.
- Pick the checklist that matches your migration type. If you're doing multiple things (e.g., rebrand + domain change), read both and combine the relevant steps.
- Read through before you start. Some steps require preparation weeks before launch day.
- Copy the checklist into your project management tool (Notion, Linear, Asana, spreadsheet) and track progress.
- Plan the redirect mapping phase early. It is often one of the more time-consuming parts of the migration and affects SEO continuity.
- Test in staging before launch. A bad regex redirect can break routing or send users to the wrong destination.
These checklists are living documents. If you've executed a migration and found gaps, have platform-specific knowledge to add, or want to contribute a new checklist for a migration type we haven't covered, please do.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
- awesome-redirects: A curated hub for redirect resources
- redirect-tools: Directory of redirect services, CDNs, and open-source tools
- redirect-recipes: Redirect configuration examples
