Checklist for moving a site from non-www to www?

[danielreyes]

Hey all,

I’m looking to move a site from non-www to www and was wondering if anyone knows of a list of things to check and update after making the switch in WordPress (i.e. updating preferred domain in GSC).

Anyone ever done this before who can lend some advice?

Thanks!

Dan

[PenaltyHammer]

Will this be on the same domain? If yes then:

• make sure you verified all properties in GSC: www and non www of your domain
• fetch all links from Google search results with some tools like scrapebox
• scan entire website page by page and make a list of all pages/posts/etc (you'll need them later)
• go to wp dashboard - settings - general and change there from non www to www wp address url and site address url (probably you have to login again after)
• empty cache if you have cache
• scan again your entire website and check if there're links pointing to non www version of your domain (probably will be redirected automatically but save this list)
• correct them - in most cases they were manually added
• combine lists of links: from Google and from your scan; remove duplicates; make sure all are non www
• do 301 test with tool like scraming frog to see if all non www pages are redirected with 301 to www pages without errrors
• combined list of links sent to reindex to speed up the process - you need some indexing software or service
• no need to set preferred domain but if you wish?