What can go wrong in a move
Three things go wrong most often: the donation path breaks, old URLs stop working, and forms stop delivering email. None of these is caused by WordPress. They are caused by launching before anyone has listed what the old site was quietly doing.
| Risk | How it happens | How to prevent it |
|---|---|---|
| Lost donations | The donate button points to an old page, or an embedded form was not carried over | Test a real gift on the new site before and after launch |
| Lost rankings | Page addresses change and nothing forwards the old ones | A redirect map covering every old URL |
| Broken partner links | Funders, directories and news articles link to pages that no longer exist | Redirect them, and check your most linked pages first |
| Silent form failures | The new server sends email differently and messages land in spam | Send form email through a proper mail service and test every form |
| Lost tracking | Analytics and ad grant conversion tracking are left off the new site | List every tracking code during the inventory |
Step 1: take an inventory first
Before any design work, list everything the current site has and does. The inventory is the single most useful document in a migration, because it turns "we think that is everything" into a checklist someone can tick.
- Every URL. Crawl the site or export the sitemap. Include PDFs such as annual reports, because other sites often link straight to them.
- Your top pages. In Google Search Console and your analytics, note the pages that bring the most visitors and the pages other sites link to.
- Every form and where each one sends its data: an inbox, a spreadsheet, a CRM, a newsletter tool.
- Every donation entry point: header button, campaign pages, tribute giving, monthly giving, links in old email footers.
- Accounts and logins: domain registrar, DNS, hosting, donation platform, email marketing, analytics. Confirm each one is registered to the organisation.
- Tracking and verification codes, including anything tied to an ad grant account.
If you find that a domain or hosting account is in a former volunteer's name, fix that now. It is far easier before a launch than during one.
Step 2: protect the donation flow
Keep the donation platform you already use unless there is a strong reason to change it. Your monthly donors are stored with that provider, not with your website, so keeping the provider means recurring gifts carry on untouched while the site around them changes.
What changes is how the form is reached. On the new WordPress site, connect the donate page to the same platform, using the provider's embed or plugin where one exists. If you are also thinking about switching tools, treat that as a separate project after launch, and read our comparison of donation plugins for Canadian charities first. Changing the website and the donation system in the same week doubles the risk for no gain.
Then check the places donors arrive from:
- Links in past email campaigns and email signatures.
- QR codes on printed material. These cannot be edited, so the old address must redirect.
- Your profile on third-party giving and directory sites.
- Social media bios and pinned posts.
Every one of these should reach a working donate page on the new site. Make a real donation through each main route and confirm the receipt and thank-you email arrive.
Step 3: map every old URL
A redirect map is a two-column sheet: the old address and the new address it should forward to. Every old URL gets a row, and each one is forwarded with a permanent (301) redirect to the closest matching new page. This is what keeps your search rankings, because it tells search engines the page moved instead of vanished.
- Redirect page to page. Sending everything to the home page throws away most of the value.
- Where an old page has no equivalent, send it to the nearest parent section.
- Keep URLs the same where you can. A page that keeps its address needs no redirect at all.
- Include PDFs and old campaign pages that still get visits.
- Avoid chains, where one redirect points to another redirect.
Our guide to setting up redirects in WordPress covers the practical side. If you are leaving a site builder, the platform guides for moving from Wix to WordPress explain what can and cannot be exported.
Step 4: move content and rebuild forms
Move content in priority order: the pages that bring visitors and gifts first, the archive last. A migration is also the best chance you will get to delete pages nobody reads, so do not pay to move them.
- Keep what works. If a program page ranks well, carry over its title, headings and main text. Improve it, but do not replace it with two lines and a photo.
- Carry over page titles and meta descriptions for your top pages.
- Add alt text as you go. Re-uploading images is the easiest moment to fix accessibility gaps.
- Rebuild each form and send a test entry to confirm it lands where the inventory says it should.
- Set up roles. Give staff and volunteers editor accounts, not administrator accounts.
Build all of this on a private staging address, not on the live domain. That way the old site keeps taking gifts until the new one is ready.
Step 5: launch day checklist
Launch on a quiet weekday morning, never on a Friday and never during a campaign. Pick a day when the people who can fix problems are at their desks.
- Take a full backup of the old site and keep it.
- Lower the DNS time-to-live a day ahead if your DNS host allows it, so the switch takes effect quickly.
- Switch the domain to the new site and confirm the SSL certificate is active.
- Test the redirect map. Check your top 20 old URLs by hand.
- Make a real donation and submit every form.
- Confirm the site is not blocking search engines. WordPress has a "discourage search engines" setting that is often left on after staging.
- Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Confirm analytics is recording visits.
The first 30 days after launch
Expect small ranking movement in the first weeks, and watch for errors instead of guessing. Search Console will report pages it can no longer find. Each of those is a missing row in your redirect map, and adding it takes a minute.
- Check the "Not found (404)" report weekly and add redirects for real pages.
- Compare donations and form entries with the same weeks last year.
- Ask partners and funders who link to you to update important links.
- Keep the old site backup until you are sure nothing was missed.
After that, the site needs ongoing care like any other. Our guide to what a nonprofit maintenance plan should include covers that part.
Next step
We design and build WordPress websites for nonprofits and charities at no charge. The organisation pays for hosting and a maintenance and support plan, both quoted in writing before any work starts. Rebuilds are welcome: we move your existing content across, keep your search rankings with proper redirects, and retire the old site once the new one is live. The full terms, including what is not covered, are on the free website for nonprofits page. For organisations that do not fit that offer, see our WordPress migration service.