Know exactly what you are moving.
Rankings go missing when URLs go missing. Before you move a website, enter it here and see every address in your sitemap by template, and which ones will need a redirect decision.
In short
The planner reads your public sitemap and returns a URL inventory by template, the platform your site appears to run on, and the addresses that will need a redirect rule or a decision in a migration.
It is the first step of every ZINC migration: nothing gets designed until every URL has a plan.
The inventory is step one. Here are the other five.
The same six steps on every move, written down while we moved our own website. The boring part comes first, because the boring part is what protects your traffic and your leads.
- Step 01
Inventory every URL.
We crawl the live site and list every page by template before anything is designed or built.
On our own moveOur site: 49 live URLs across six templates, each with a destination before a line of code.
- Step 02
Keep the URLs.
Same paths, same slugs. An address only changes when a 301 redirect is in place for it.
On our own move44 kept their exact address. 5 retired pages got 301s. Our highest-traffic page never moved.
- Step 03
Export everything.
CMS content, every file on the old platform’s CDN, and the rendered HTML of every page as the reference copy.
On our own move549 files moved off the old CDN. 4 CMS collections, 45 items, imported and checked.
- Step 04
Parity first. Then improve.
The first version is a faithful copy: same pages, same copy, same metadata. Changes come after sign-off, so any traffic shift has one cause to look at, not ten.
On our own moveOur first complete build took one day, compared page by page against the original by screenshot.
- Step 05
Prove the business paths.
Forms, CRM delivery, notifications, analytics, and consent are tested end to end, from the visitor’s click to the right person’s inbox.
On our own moveLesson we learned: a form that saves a lead is not a form that tells anyone. We test to the inbox now.
- Step 06
Govern, launch, and watch.
Dispatch is connected before the agent touches production. Redirects go live at cutover, the sitemap is submitted, and 404s and indexing are watched closely.
On our own moveSince our launch: 36 reviewed changes in six weeks, each one previewed before release.