WordPress migrations that don’t lose traffic, links, or rankings — scoped from a paid 60-minute migration plan. If you are moving WordPress between hosts, replatforming off Drupal, Wix, Squarespace, or static HTML onto WordPress, or restructuring URLs on a site that already ranks, the cost of doing it badly is months of recovery. The cost of doing it well is a real plan, written down, with the redirect map already built before anyone touches DNS.

Recent migration-adjacent WordPress work: Sherwin-Williams · M.L. Campbell Training Centre · Sayerlack · national news network, 2011–2012 platform migration

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The problem you’re sitting in

Migrations are where WordPress projects most often go publicly wrong. The site moves, traffic drops 40 percent, the redirect map missed a thousand legacy URLs, the email forms break for two days, and the executive sponsor who approved the budget is now in a meeting asking why.

The work is not hard if you have done it before. It is brutal if you have not. The failure modes are the same every time: incomplete URL inventory, redirect rules written after launch instead of before, no canonical-URL audit on the new site, and no monitoring of indexation in the weeks after cutover.

What I do

Host-to-host WordPress migrations. Off shared hosting onto a real platform, between managed hosts, or onto your own infrastructure. With staged cutover and DNS plan.
Platform-to-WordPress migrations. Drupal, Joomla, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Ghost, static HTML, custom CMS exports. Content modeling, taxonomy mapping, redirect maps, media migration.
Multisite consolidations. Pulling separate WordPress installs into a multisite network, or splitting a multisite back into independent installs. Both directions, both with their own pitfalls.
Domain and URL restructures. Domain changes, subdomain-to-subdirectory moves, taxonomy slug changes, permalink-structure changes on sites that already rank. Each of these has a redirect-map shape that is non-negotiable; the question is whether you build it before launch or after.

How an engagement starts

Most migration engagements start with a paid 60-minute Migration Plan call. You bring the source environment details, the destination, the constraints, and the deadline. I bring the question list and a written plan that lands in your inbox the same day: scope, risks, redirect-map approach, cutover timing, monitoring window, and a fixed-fee quote for the migration itself.

If the plan call surfaces that the migration is simpler than you thought and you can run it in-house, I will tell you that on the call. The plan is the deliverable; the build is a separate decision.

What this is not

Not a content rewrite. Migration moves your content; it does not rewrite it. If you want a content overhaul, do it before or after, not during.
Not a redesign. If you are migrating and redesigning at the same time, that is two projects pretending to be one, and I will recommend sequencing them.
Not ongoing hosting. I do not resell hosting. I will recommend hosts I trust and help you set up the relationship directly.
Not “migrate by tomorrow.” Real migrations need a real timeline. Emergency cutovers exist; they are priced accordingly.

Who this is for

Fit. Sites with real organic traffic where losing it would hurt the business.
Fit. Teams replatforming onto WordPress from a CMS they have outgrown, or off WordPress hosting that has stopped fitting.
Fit. Organizations consolidating multiple sites into one, or splitting a single site into properly-separated properties.
Not fit. Brand-new sites with no traffic to preserve. The plan and discipline are overkill at that scale.
Not fit. Buyers who want a “click this button to migrate” plugin recommendation. Those plugins exist. They handle the easy 80 percent. The remaining 20 is the part that breaks the project.

Why work with me on this specifically

Prior portfolio work for one of Canada’s largest news networks during the 2011–2012 platform migration. More than a dozen metro newspaper sites, real legacy URL inventories, real redirect maps, real consequences for getting it wrong.
WordPress development since 2007. Migrations have been part of the work the entire time, on every scale from one-person blogs to multisite networks.
SEO discipline integrated into the migration plan, not bolted on after launch. Redirect-map shape, canonical-URL audit, and indexation monitoring are part of the engagement, not separate consulting.
Senior-developer rate, $275 CAD/hr. Migration plan is paid; build is fixed-fee after the plan.
Independent client work, off the day-job hours at Sherwin-Williams.

Common questions

How much is the migration plan call?

The 60-minute plan is quoted on the discovery call after I know the scope. The free 20-minute call is where we figure out whether the plan engagement makes sense and what shape it should take.

Will I lose SEO rankings?

A well-planned WordPress migration usually shows a brief dip in the first two weeks and recovers within four to six. A poorly planned one can take months to recover from, and some never fully do. The plan exists to put your migration in the first category.

Can you migrate from Drupal or Wix or Squarespace?

Yes. Each platform has its own export shape and its own quirks. Wix is the most painful because the export options are limited; Squarespace is more cooperative; Drupal is technically easier but the content model usually needs careful mapping.

How long does a migration take end to end?

Smallest jobs land in two weeks. Most fall between four and eight. Multisite consolidations or platform-to-WordPress moves with a thousand pages of legacy content can run two to three months. The plan call gives you the number for your specific situation.

Do you handle DNS and email?

I write the DNS plan and walk your team or your IT provider through executing it. I do not take ownership of your DNS or email, and you should be cautious of any developer who wants to.

What a migration engagement costs

Migration engagements ladder by site size and complexity. The full pricing matrix — including the pre-migration audit credit and the cutover risk surface — lives on the canonical Migration service page. The shape of the buyer choice:

Small site ($1,375–$2,750): Under 500 posts, clean permalink structure. Includes pre-check level audit work covering content inventory, redirect map, and cutover plan.
Mid-size ($2,750–$8,250): Full content audit, redirect map cross-referenced against Search Console top-traffic URLs, media reconciliation, plugin compatibility under new PHP/MySQL versions.
Large or complex ($8,250–$22,000): Multi-site governance, archive-content integrity, taxonomy reorganisation, staged cutover sequence with documented rollback at every step.

The pre-migration audit doubles as the scoping document and credits forward against the migration work itself, or against any larger build engagement if the migration surfaces work beyond the original scope. The senior-developer rate is $275 CAD/hr.

When you are ready

If you have a migration on the calendar and you want a senior set of eyes on the plan before the cutover, the 20-minute call is the lowest-friction way to start.