Website migration monitoring checklist

You hear from OctoPing's alerts when a host or platform move changes the network or CDN behind a site, or its nameservers or mail records, and whether the move brought a search block along, before a client writes to ask. This checklist covers a cutover, from the maintenance window to uptime afterwards.

What goes wrong in a migration

In our experience four things go wrong often enough to plan for. The new host serves a bad certificate. The staging robots.txt or a noindex tag arrives with the new build. A rebuilt DNS zone comes out with different mail records. Old URLs redirect to the home page, and the last three leave the uptime check green.

Before the cutover

1. 1. List the URLs

   Add the live site's key URLs as sites: the home page, the landing pages that earn the traffic and one page from each template.

2. 2. Switch on the move checks

   Hosting, DNS and robots.txt checks start switched off. Switch on IP/Hosting Changes, the nameserver and MX checks and Robots.txt Monitoring, then wait for each to run once. That first lookup is the baseline, which here is the old host, and sends no alert. Each runs every 6 hours by default, and a move is noticed at the next lookup, so choose every hour for all three around the cutover.

3. 3. Schedule a maintenance window

   Open Maintenance and cover the listed sites. A window begins within about a minute of its start time, so start it a few minutes early. A Member can schedule up to 24 hours, an Admin or Owner up to 7 days. While it runs, down, slow-response and status-change alerts are held back and the time is left out of uptime and outages. Hosting, DNS, robots.txt, noindex, certificate and domain alerts still send, and they confirm the move. A status page that shows the sites lists the window by name, so write it for your client. See maintenance windows.

Confirm the move with hosting and DNS alerts

When the new host is on a different network, the hosting check alerts at its next lookup with the old network and the new one side by side. A changed nameserver or mail record sends a DNS alert with the old and new records. A move between servers inside one network sends nothing, and neither does a move behind a CDN that stays in front, so open the site's IP / Hosting card when an expected alert doesn't come, because its IP Addresses field shows the current address. See the guide to host migrations and DNS monitoring.

SSL on the new host

The certificate check reads what the server presents every day by default. A certificate that is expired, self-signed or issued for another name sends no expiry warning. The uptime check catches it instead: the site fails with a TLS/SSL error, and the down alert names that cause after 3 failed checks in a row by default. A window holds that alert back, so a wrong certificate alerts under the normal rules from its first failing check after the window ends. See SSL certificate monitoring.

robots.txt and noindex on the new site

A new build can bring the staging robots.txt or a noindex tag with it. The next check that reads the file sends Robots.txt Changed, with the diff and a Blocked flag when the file has Disallow: / under User-agent: *, or Noindex Added once two reads of the page agree, with the directive text and where it was found. A holding page that answers 200 with noindex raises Noindex Added too, and Noindex Removed when the real site returns, while an error response such as a 503 isn't read. A site you add after the move starts its own baseline, and a block already there sends no alert, so after the first check confirm the file reads Indexable and the page Allowed. See robots.txt monitoring.

Uptime and failure reasons after the move

The down alert names the cause, such as Timeout, DNS resolution failed, TLS/SSL error or the HTTP status, and lists what each location saw. A firewall rule on the new host can refuse OctoPing's own checker while visitors load the site. When every region reaches the site and only the primary checker is refused, you get one notice with the addresses to allow when they're known, no down alert, and the site reads Partial. See telling a regional outage from a real outage.

The content check across the move

Switch on the content check before the cutover for pages whose body copy should survive the move, so the old site is the baseline. It checks every 30 minutes by default, and the first check that finds different text sends the changed lines. It reads main text, which can leave out navigation, buttons, footers and, on some page builders, headlines and prices, so change a line on a page you care about and see whether the next check reports it before you rely on it. A page a script builds in the browser has no main text to read, so OctoPing compares its raw HTML and a new asset file name counts as a change. See website change detection.

Redirects

A check follows redirects and reads the final response, so an old URL that redirects to the new site reads as up, even when it lands on the home page. Add the new URLs that matter as sites once they answer. When the content check is on for an old URL, it shows the changed text if the redirect lands on a different page.

After the cutover

When the alerts agree that the move is complete, choose End now on the window and return the intervals you shortened to your usual ones. SEO change monitoring covers the alerts you keep on.

Who builds OctoPing

OctoPing is built by Axiolo, which uses it to watch its clients' marketing websites and landing pages. The checks, the client status pages and the monthly summaries are the ones Axiolo relies on for that work.

How it fits the price

Every plan runs the hosting, DNS, SSL, robots.txt and content checks on every site, and includes maintenance windows. Plans start at $19 a month for 20 sites. See pricing for the full list.

Every account starts with a 14-day free trial. No card required. Start your 14-day trial and add the site you are about to move to see it working.