Moving from an old church website, without losing anything

The idea of switching website providers puts a lot of churches off, usually because of one worry: a gap where the church has no website at all, or a domain name that gets lost in the process. Neither has to happen.

Before you switch, check these three things

• Who owns your domain name. If your church has a domain (something ending .org.uk, .church, or similar), find out who registered it and whether the church, rather than a former webmaster or the old provider, has control of it.
• What content is worth keeping. History pages, photos, written parish stories — anything accurate and still relevant can usually be carried over rather than rewritten from nothing.
• Whether safeguarding information is current. A good moment to check your DSA and Parish Safeguarding Officer details are actually correct on the old site, since they often aren't.

How the move actually happens

The new site is built first, alongside the old one, not instead of it. Nothing changes for visitors until the new site is ready and you've reviewed it. Once you're happy, the domain gets pointed at the new site and it goes live in the old one's place, on a date agreed with you. There's no point where the church has no website at all.

If your domain isn't registered yet, or nobody can locate the login for the current one, that's a common starting point, not a blocker — registering a new domain, or recovering access to an old one, is handled as part of getting started.

What happens to the old site

Once the new site is live and the domain is pointed at it, the old site is simply retired. If it was on a paid hosting plan, that's worth cancelling separately, since it's outside the scope of what a new build includes.

What it costs

Nothing. Switching costs your church the same as any other build here: free, funded by sponsors, whether you're starting from nothing or moving off an old site. See Switch to Us for the full detail.