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Replace your website and keep your domain
You can replace the pages and keep your domain. Do this check before you pay anyone. Log in where you renew the name. If you cannot log in, stop. The redesign is not the first job. Getting the name into your own account is.
Keep your domain by proving you control it
The domain is the address on the truck, the invoices, and the Google result. A new name throws that away. The company where you renew it is the registrar. The login and the card on that account must be yours.
- Log in at the registrar. Save the login in a place you can open next year.
- Turn on the renewal so the name does not expire while you argue about a design.
- Confirm the contact email is yours, not a designer who left.
- Write down the current host. You will need it if a switch goes wrong.
- Do not give the registrar password to a vendor. They can work on the pages without owning the name.
If the name is in someone else's account, ask them to transfer it to you before any design starts. Get that in writing. A pretty preview is useless if you cannot point the name when you are ready.
The order that keeps the site up
Build the new pages beside the old site. Do not take the old site down to start. Customers should still reach the current pages while you read the new ones.
- Open the new pages and fix the phone, the towns, and the photos.
- Open them on your phone and tap the number. The dialer must open.
- Leave the old host running.
- Point DNS only when the new site is the one you want. DNS is the setting that sends the name to a host.
- Call the number from the live page after the switch, from a phone that is not yours.
- Cancel the old host only after that call works.
If you point DNS first, the name can show a half-finished page. If you cancel the old host first, the name can show nothing. The old site is your spare until the new one passes the phone test.
What to do if the name breaks
If the site goes blank after the switch, point DNS back to the old host. That is why you wrote the old host down. Do not buy a new domain to escape a bad switch. Fix the setting.
If an old path shows an error, that path needs a permanent move to the new path. That move is called a 301. Use it for a changed page address. Do not use it to hop to a new brand name.
Two public copies of the same page also cause trouble. After the switch, the old files should not answer on a second address. One name. One set of pages.
If you want this done from the site you already have, Vortex Personal is $59 a month for one live site. Pro is $449 a month for up to 10. Business is $2,499 a month for up to 150. Hosting is included. A year is ten times the month price. The old site stays up until you switch.
When the preview passes the phone test, start a rebuild.
Add up the real bill on what a small business website costs before you compare a one-time quote.