Switching over from your old site
Your domain currently shows an old website that is up and taking enquiries. The new one is ready. This is how to swap them without a gap.
The whole thing turns on one idea: **finish the new site on its Meridian address first, and change the domain's settings last.** Everything else follows from that.
Before you touch the domain
1. Finish the site on its Meridian address. Every page, the portfolio, the journal posts you are carrying over, your contact form. Open it on a phone. Read it out loud. It is far easier to fix now than once it is live.
2. Bring the old content across if you have not already — bringing your old site across copies pages and photographs.
3. Set up redirects for your old addresses. This is the step people skip and regret.
List the pages on your old site that other people link to — from Google, from a venue's supplier page, from an old Instagram bio, from a directory listing. For each one, add a redirect on the SEO screen under **Send an old address somewhere**, from the old address to where that page now lives — for example /weddings/pricing to /investment. See SEO for the steps.
A link from a venue's website to a page that suddenly says "not found" tends to get quietly removed, and search rankings you spent years earning go with it.
4. Optional: shorten how long the internet remembers your old settings. Your domain's settings include a number called TTL ("time to live") — how long other computers keep using the old settings before checking again. A day or two before the switch, if your registrar lets you, set it to five minutes (300 seconds). The change then takes effect much faster. Put it back afterwards.
5. Check the new site's contact form actually reaches you. Send yourself an enquiry.
The switch
6. Connect your domain and add the records at the company you bought the domain from. Using your own domain walks through it step by step. Where your old site has a record for the same name (usually an A record for @, or a CNAME for www), change that record to the new value rather than adding a second one.
Nothing breaks at this moment. Your old site keeps answering until the change spreads, and your new one keeps working on its Meridian address.
7. Wait for it to go live. The screen tells you where it is up to, and the secure padlock (https) is set up automatically once the records are right.
8. Check both addresses — with and without www. — open your new site. They should; www is sent to the bare domain for you.
Afterwards
9. Keep the old website running for a fortnight. It usually costs one more month and is the cheapest insurance there is: if something was missed, you can put the old records back in minutes.
10. Tell Google about your new site. Your site's list of pages for Google is at /sitemap.xml on your domain. If you use Google Search Console, add it there rather than waiting for Google to find it.
11. Watch for "not found" pages in the first week. Google Search Console lists any it finds. Each one is one more redirect to add.
12. Delete the _meridian TXT record once the site is live, if you like. It has done its job.
If the domain is managed by Squarespace, Wix, Showit or similar
These platforms often look after your domain's settings for you, so the records are not where you expect. You may need to move the domain's settings ("name servers") back to the company you bought the domain from before you can add ours. Find this out at step one, not step six.
If you would rather we did it
Raise a support ticket. Tell us your domain, who it is registered with, and when you want it to happen. It is a short conversation and we have done it a good many times.