Domain Migration Preflight Checklist

# Domain Migration Preflight Checklist

- Migration type: Domain change
- Source: -
- Destination: -
- Progress: 0%
- Migration score: 0/100
- Open critical checks: 8
- Open warning checks: 6

## Checklist
- [ ] Redirect map is complete (critical)
- [ ] Redirects return 301 in one hop (critical)
- [ ] Canonical tags point to the new URLs (critical)
- [ ] New XML sitemap is ready (critical)
- [ ] Search Console change of address is planned (critical)
- [ ] Rollback plan is documented (critical)
- [ ] Internal links use destination URLs (critical)
- [ ] Post-launch monitoring plan exists (critical)
- [ ] DNS TTL is lowered before cutover (warning)
- [ ] Hreflang references are updated (warning)
- [ ] Robots rules are reviewed (warning)
- [ ] Analytics annotation is prepared (warning)
- [ ] Marketing URLs are updated (warning)
- [ ] Content freeze window is agreed (warning)

## Redirect map template
```csv
source,destination,status,notes
/old-url,/new-url,301,
```

## Redirect snippet
```apache
# Add source,destination sample pairs to generate redirect rules.
```

## Canonical
```html
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/">
```

## Sitemap
```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
```

## Search Console
1. Verify source and destination properties.
2. Submit the destination sitemap.
3. Use Change of Address for domain migrations when available.
4. Monitor coverage, crawl stats, and top pages daily after launch.

## Timeline
- T-14 days: Finalize redirect map, lower DNS TTL, verify destination properties, and freeze risky URL changes.
- T-7 days: Crawl the source site, compare templates, prepare new sitemap, update canonical and hreflang references.
- Launch day: Deploy redirects, submit new sitemap, request Search Console change of address when applicable, and monitor logs.
- T+7 days: Review crawl errors, redirect chains, index coverage, analytics anomalies, rankings, and conversion paths.

## Warnings
- Add the source domain or old URL pattern.
- Add the destination domain or new URL pattern.
- Critical migration checks are still open.
- Add sample old/new URL pairs to produce redirect snippets.