Moving your restaurant website: a practical handoff checklist
Your website can move to a new provider while the same domain stays in your name. Before the switch, find out who controls the domain, where the menu and ordering links live, and what needs to keep working when the new site appears.
This checklist gives a restaurant owner and their website provider a shared list to review. It is a planning guide; the exact steps depend on your registrar, hosting and ordering services.
1. Find the accounts behind the website
Write down the domain name, registrar, renewal date and the person who can sign in. Your registrar manages the domain registration; your website host serves the site. They may be the same company, but they do different jobs.
Check who has access to the account and how renewal is paid. Keep passwords in your approved password manager, not in a shared handoff document. Ask for written answers about ownership, cancellation and data export before changing providers.
If your team uses email at the same domain, list who manages its DNS and email service. A website change can require DNS work; the person making that change should preserve the records your email needs. Test mail after the switch.
2. Record what guests use today
Open your existing site on a phone. Note the URLs for the homepage, menu, contact information, ordering and reservations. Record which ordering provider handles pickup and delivery, where the orders appear, and who receives them.
Keep a copy of your current approved menu, hours, location details and photos you have permission to use. Ask about exporting content and customer data using the relevant provider’s supported tools. Do not assume an image or guest list can be reused simply because it appears on the current site.
3. Prepare the new site privately
Before making it public, check the restaurant name, address, phone, hours, menu, prices and ordering or booking destinations against information your team confirms. Make the primary next step easy to find on a phone.
Test a change in a preview or controlled environment. For ordering, agree with the provider how to run a safe test and how it will be recognized and cancelled or refunded if needed. A visible button alone does not prove that payment, fulfillment and notifications work.
Give the owner one clear point to review the new page before it replaces the existing one. The restaurant website design guide covers the information guests look for; this checklist covers the changeover.
4. Keep addresses stable where you can
List important existing pages next to their new destinations. If a URL genuinely changes, ask the person managing the site to set a suitable permanent redirect to the most relevant new page. Check that each old link reaches the intended destination.
Google’s site-move guidance recommends preparing a URL map, testing redirects and checking canonical and indexing settings. It also advises against sending many unrelated old pages to one generic destination. Search systems can take time to process a move, and a redirect is not a promise of unchanged traffic.
If the domain and paths stay the same, do not invent redirects. Check the website, menu and ordering links at their existing addresses after the provider switch.
5. Switch, then check the guest journey
After the owner approves the site, have the responsible provider make the agreed connection or DNS changes. On a phone and a desktop browser, check the homepage, menu, order route, booking route, contact details and email. Confirm that your staff can see any controlled test order or request in the expected place.
Keep the old provider’s service available until the new path has been checked and you understand the contractual consequences of closing it. Do not cancel a domain registration, email account or ordering account just because the website looks right.
6. Leave the restaurant with a handoff record
Record the provider names, domain renewal date, support contact, public URLs and who can make future updates. Add a short process for checking seasonal hours, menu prices and photos. Keep credentials outside the document.
Semperi’s website overview explains its proposed website workflow. For a related partner perspective, Fleksa publishes a restaurant website and online ordering setup guide. Semperi is made by the team behind Fleksa. Verify the exact setup and responsibilities for your own accounts before making a switch.
Questions to ask your provider
- Who owns and renews the domain, and who can change its DNS?
- How are website, ordering, reservation and email services connected?
- Which URLs will change, and who will test the redirects?
- How do we run a safe order or booking test?
- What content and customer data can be exported, and what happens when the agreement ends?
