Site Health & Migration
Not every website problem calls for a new website. Sometimes the site is fundamentally sound and something specific is wrong—it's slow, it broke after an update, it's on a platform that no longer fits, or it needs to move without losing the search visibility it already earned.
- Your site takes long enough to load that you notice it yourself.
- A plugin or theme update broke something, and nobody is sure what.
- You inherited a site nobody has updated in years, and you're afraid to touch it.
- You're leaving your current host, platform, or agency and need everything to survive the move.
- Traffic dropped after a redesign or a move, and nobody can tell you why.
What you get
- A performance audit that names the actual causes, in priority order, with the effort each fix takes
- Implementation of the fixes—not just a report telling you to hire someone
- Platform, host, or domain migrations with redirects mapped before anything moves
- Recovery of broken, outdated, or compromised WordPress installations—rebuilt from clean sources rather than cleaned in place, so the fix actually holds
- A pre-launch and post-launch check on any redesign, so a new site doesn't cost you existing visibility
- Written handover notes, so the next person isn't starting from nothing
Where this service stops
- We tell you when a rebuild is the cheaper answer, even though the repair is the smaller invoice.
- Recovery work is scoped after we look. A compromised site is diagnosed before it is quoted, because nobody can price it honestly beforehand.
- We recover ordinary WordPress compromises—the common infections that arrive through an outdated plugin. If we find evidence that the compromise reaches past the website itself, or that customer data was taken, we stop and tell you in writing that you need an incident response specialist. That is a real boundary, not a disclaimer.
- We don't do forensic investigation or breach reporting. We restore, harden, and document what we did; establishing exactly what was taken and when is a different profession.
- Performance work is bounded by the platform you're on. Some ceilings can't be raised without changing what the site runs on, and we'll tell you when you've hit one.
Also covered under this service
- Core Web Vitals
- WordPress rescue and cleanup
- Plugin and theme conflicts
- Host and domain moves
- Redirect mapping
- Staging environments
- Backup and update routines
- Compromised-site recovery
- HTTPS and mixed-content fixes
What we look at first
A site with a problem gets diagnosed before it gets touched. The order matters—several of these change what the others mean:
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What the site is actually serving
Real load times on a real connection, not a score. Which requests are slow, which are large, and which are running before anything visible appears.
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What's running that shouldn't be
Plugins doing nothing, scripts loading on every page for one feature on one page, tracking installed twice. This is where most of the recoverable time lives.
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What's out of date and how badly
Core, theme, plugins, and the platform underneath. We separate "behind" from "unsafe"—they are not the same urgency.
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What breaks if it moves
Before any migration: every URL, every redirect already in place, every integration pointing at the current setup. The list is made before anything is touched.
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What search already knows about you
Indexed pages, existing rankings, and inbound links. This is the asset a migration most often destroys, and it is the one nobody checks until it's gone.
Wondering if Site Health & Migration is the right first step?
Describe your situation and we'll say whether this service would help, and what we would do first. If it isn't worth the spend yet, we'll tell you that.
Is this the right starting point?
This service fits if
- Your site works well enough that replacing it would be wasteful—it needs repair, not reinvention.
- You need to move platforms or hosts and want the search visibility to come with you.
- You want someone to tell you honestly whether this site is worth fixing.
Probably skip it if
- The site is genuinely past saving. We'll say so and point you at Web Development rather than bill you to prop it up.
- You want ongoing security monitoring as a standalone product—that lives in a care plan alongside other work, not as its own service.
What to expect
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Diagnose before touching
You get a written diagnosis first: what is wrong, what it is costing, and what fixing it involves. If the answer is "this needs replacing," you hear that before you spend anything on repair.
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Fix on a copy
Work happens on a staging copy with a backup taken first. Nothing touches the live site until it has been seen working somewhere else.
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Move, verify, and hand over
Changes go live with redirects in place and a post-launch check against the pre-launch list. You get written notes on what changed and what to watch.
Timeline
A performance diagnosis is typically days, not weeks. Fixes depend entirely on what the diagnosis finds. Migrations are scheduled around your business rather than ours—the cutover is the short part; the preparation is the work.
What we need from you
Access to the site, host, and domain registrar—this is the most common thing that stalls a migration. Plus an honest account of what has already been tried, including anything that made it worse.
How pricing works
A diagnosis is fixed-price and delivered whether or not you hire us for the fix. Repair and migration work is quoted after the diagnosis, because pricing this work beforehand means guessing.
Ask what this would costThe questions buyers ask first
Straight answers to the two most common ones. If yours isn't covered below, ask—we answer either way.
Ask your questionMy site is slow. Can you just make it faster?
Usually, but "slow" has several unrelated causes and they need different fixes—hosting, images, scripts, database, or the theme itself. We diagnose first and tell you which one you have, along with how much each fix would actually buy you. Some sites have one dominant cause and a big improvement available; others have ten small ones and a modest ceiling. You get told which situation you're in.
Can you move my site without losing my Google rankings?
That's the main thing a migration is judged on. Every existing URL is mapped to its new address before anything moves, redirects go in at cutover rather than after, and we check indexing and errors in the days following. Some short-term movement during a platform change is normal; losing pages permanently is not, and it's almost always caused by redirects that were never mapped.
More questions
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Often, yes—for the ordinary case, which is most of them: an outdated plugin let something in, and the site is serving spam or redirects. We rebuild rather than clean. That means fresh core and plugins from their original sources, your content and database brought back across after inspection, and the site hardened before it goes live again. Hunting individual backdoors in an infected file tree is quicker to bill and far likelier to leave one behind—these infections almost always plant several. We also rotate every credential involved, because the most common reason a site gets reinfected a week later is a password the attacker already had. Two things we don't do: forensic investigation and breach reporting. If we find signs that customer data was taken, or that the compromise goes beyond the website, we stop and tell you plainly that you need an incident response specialist instead.
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That's the question the diagnosis answers, and we have no incentive to steer it—a rebuild is the larger project. The honest test is whether the site's structure and content are sound. If they are, repair is usually far cheaper. If the foundation is the problem, repair just costs you twice.
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We can, as an ongoing arrangement rather than a product with a price list. What makes it worth paying for isn't plugin updates—those are table stakes—it's someone watching performance, tracking, and visibility over time and telling you when something changes. If all you need is updates and backups, your host may already do it, and we'll say so.