Site Migration from One Dev. and Server to Another Dev. and Server
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Hi Mozzers!
I've got a client that is in the early stages of moving the development of their site to another company and therefore, a new server. The site is very large and the migration will take place over 18 months. In the beginning, smaller chunks of the site will be moved, and as that process gets dialed in, larger portions will migrate.
It was brought to our attention today that they (on either side of development) have not yet worked out the logistics of keeping the domain and URL structure consistent throughout the migration. The initial proposal was that they publish newly migrated pages to a subdomain, which we obviously want to steer away from. I'm now on a mission to find a solution that will make everyone happy; client, old dev, new dev, and us (as the SEO partner).
Does anyone have experience in managing SEO through a migration such as this?
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This is exactly the solution I've been after. Your input and walk-thru is much appreciated!
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Some load balancing hardware might be able to do this, too - basically, instead of splitting up requests evenly across multiple servers, they'd be configured to send some specific requests to one server and other requests to another server.
Unfortunately, this gets very technical very quickly, and depends completely on your own hardware, OS, configuration, etc. (and, frankly, I'm no expert at all, other than knowing it's possible). There's typically also some added cost involved.
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Having read through your conversation with Ruth, it looks like there aren't many options open to you.
Your client might be able to use a reverse proxy. I'll walk you through a very simple example with Apache, but the same principles hold for other web servers. I should warn you too that proxies can be fickle, and it may be difficult to persuade the developers to put in the work!
Let's say we host the existing website at example.com, and the new site – or what exists of it so far – at staging.example.com. So there are a couple of different DNS records, with the root domain pointing to the IP address of the old server, and the staging subdomain pointing to the IP address of the new server.
Let's also assume that we're migrating a directory called "/foo" for now. We now want those URLs, and only those URLs, to be served from the new server.
We would then use ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse directives on example.com, to route those requests to the new server:
ProxyPass /foo http://staging.example.com
ProxyPassReverse /foo http://staging.example.com
The first line says "proxy requests to example.com/foo to staging.example.com/foo instead".
The second line is essential because let's say that one of the URLs in /foo is a redirect. Specifically, let's imagine that staging.example.com/foo/1 is a 301 redirect to staging.example.com/foo/2. Now when the user visits example.com/foo/1, their request is proxied to staging.example.com/foo/1, which is in turn 301-redirected to staging.example.com/foo/2, and this is what will show in the address bar (and to Googlebot). That's what you don't want because then the subdomain is visible to Google. So the point of the second line is to say that when the redirect takes place, it should be adjusted back to the form of the original request before being returned to the client. So now, with that second line in place, the request chain looks like this:
Client requests example.com/foo/1
That's proxied to staging.example.com/foo/1
That's a 301-redirect to staging.example.com/foo/2
And that URL is then adjusted back to example.com/foo/2 before the user sees it!
As you migrate sections of the site, you would add new ProxyPass directives to proxy those directories. Then, when you've migrated the whole site, you change the DNS so that the root A record now points to the IP address of the new server, remove the DNS record for staging.example.com, and ditch the old server.
You'll need to ensure that the developers controlling the old site implement the proxies correctly and that there's a sensible mapping of old directory structures to new ones. Your life will be a lot easier if you can minimise the number of redirects taking place on the new server. Good luck!
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It's not a matter of keeping them happy, it's simply helping our client accomplish what is best for their SEO during this migration. We have a really good relationship with them, so it's in everyone's best interest if we help find a viable solution.
Unfortunately, launching all at once isn't an option. This migration has been planned for months, there's no going back to the drawing board at this point. There won't be any brand confusion because visitors don't have much reason to be bouncing around to the different sections, they're very localized.
Thank you for your input, but it looks like I'm still on the hunt for a solution.
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Thanks for the clarification!
From my perspective, your desire to keep both companies happy, while laudable, shouldn't have to be your problem because both companies work for you - they should be the ones figuring out how to work together - although I suppose the company that's on it's way out doesn't have a ton of incentive to play nicely.
Is the new design going to be substantially different from the old design? If so, it might make sense for them to do all of the design and dev work in their own staging environment, and then launch the site all at once when it's ready. I know 18 months is a long time, but I'd be concerned about the brand and user experience implications of having two different designs live on the same site.
I don't know of a way to have one domain hosted on two different servers. Your other best bet would probably be to do as Chris suggested and move the entire existing site over to the new server, then make changes from there.
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Thanks for your response Ruth.
Luckily, the URLs won't be changing....at least that's the plan anyway!
I'm looking more for info on how to have one domain with different sections spread across 2 different servers. The new development company has a proprietary CMS and are redesigning portions of the site incrementally. They will probably be reluctant to work off of the old development company's server, which is why we're trying to provide a solution that makes both dev companies happy.
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You're right to be against the subdomain idea - that's not a good call for SEO at all.
What I would do is start out with a full database export of all the URLs on the current site, and figure out what URL each of those resources is ultimately going to live at. This can be daunting with a large site, but it goes faster than you think it's going to - once you figure out that all the pages in example.com/old-folder/pagename are now going to live at example.com/new-folder/pagename you can figure out the URL structure for large chunks of the site at a time. Since it sounds like there won't be any changes to the overall design and structure of the site, just some possible URL changes, that will make it easier, too. I did this for the SEOmoz.org -> Moz.com transition and it took about a month to map out 65,000 pages alongside my other SEO duties (but that was with a lot of major changes in site structure, too).
Once everyone (you, the client, both dev teams) have agreed on the new structure, it's simply a matter of:
- moving the pages in each "chunk" from their old URLs to their new URLs
- 301 redirecting the old URLs to the new URLs on a page-to-page level
- doing a database find+replace on the old site and the new one to update internal links to those pages
Be really really careful with managing expectations for this. It's very common to see pages take a temporary hit in rankings and traffic immediately after they move to a new URL; this drop is usually temporary and reversible. But you don't want the client taking that data as proof that the migration isn't going to work or isn't working, and abandoning ship. To help matters along, take a look at what their best inbound links are and the linking sites with whom you have the best relationship, and as those pages move to their new addresses, reach out to the linking sites to try to get those links updated.
Does that answer your question? Happy to discuss further if not.
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Thanks for your response!
The new dev company proposed the subdomain idea, which I'm adamantly against. So this is why I'm on the search for an alternative- surely, someone else has had a similar situation.
There is a proprietary CMS involved, I should have mentioned that initially, which is where the real challenge comes in. I don't think either of the developers would be thrilled about a recommendation where they put there info on someone else's box, unless there is some way to lock down access that I'm not familiar with.
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We've handled plenty of site migrations but certainly not on an 18-month time scale! That said, the same concepts apply.
So if I understand correctly, they want to keep the current site running (old server and dev) and migrate one section of the site at a time to a subdomain so users would end up visiting a seemingly random mix of domain.com and sub.domain.com?
Without knowing more of the details, I suppose the best solution would be to relocate the whole site, database and all, to the new server then the new devs can work on whatever it is they were looking to change. Since you haven't already suggested that, there must be some limitation that makes this impossible - proprietary CMS or something?
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