EAGLE SOLUTIONS
In short: My website takeover process runs over the first two weeks: collecting all access on day 1, making two backups and testing a restore on day 2, a written health check on days 3-7, then the first fixes on days 8-14. You get the written report even if you decide not to continue with me.
When you hand an existing website over to someone else, two questions usually come up: what happens to it in the meantime, and when do you find out what it costs. The best answer to both is to have it written down in advance. This article describes a website takeover step by step, how it works with me in the first two weeks.
Website takeover step by step: Day 1, access
The first step is always the same: collecting everything that needs access. Domain, hosting, WordPress admin, and if there are any, the payment gateway, invoicing, the courier service, the Google accounts. This is usually the longest step, because over the years these get scattered, and sometimes they are in someone else's name.
If something is missing, I also write down how it can be recovered. I wrote a separate article about this for when the former developer cannot be reached.
I ask for one thing during this time: while the takeover is in progress, do not change the site. That way I know exactly what the original state was.
Day 2: backup and a local copy
Before I touch anything, two backups are made (why that matters): one on the hosting, and one with me, on my own machine. I work on the local copy and leave the live site alone. This is where many takeovers go wrong: whoever starts updating a site that has not been touched for years directly on the live server can easily break it, I wrote about that too.
I also restore the backup onto the copy once. If that fails, the backup is not usable, and it is better to find out now than during an outage.
Days 3-7: the health check
This is the core of the work. I go through:
- The versions. Which WordPress and PHP versions are running, how far behind the plugins are, and whether any of them have known vulnerabilities or have been abandoned for years.
- The licences. For a premium theme or plugin, whether the licence is valid and whose name it is in. A theme with an expired licence cannot be updated, and in the long run that is the biggest risk.
- Security. Whether there are unknown admin users or suspicious files, and whether there is a firewall and login protection.
- Whether it works. Do the forms work, do the emails arrive, and for online stores, do payment and shipping work. I wrote about forms separately, because this is the most common silent error.
- Speed and search engines. How long it takes to load on a phone, and whether Google sees it properly.
You get a written report on all of this, in plain language: what is urgent, what is important and what can wait. It describes what I see, with my recommendation, rather than an automated tool's printout.
Days 8-14: the first fixes
At the end of the report there is an offer: what I suggest doing, for how much, and in what order. Up to this point you have no obligation, and the report is yours even if you do not continue with me.
If you do, I start with the urgent things: overdue security updates (first on the copy, then live), removing unknown users, changing passwords, setting up backups if they were not working. If the hosting is weak or expensive, we also plan the move at this point, without downtime.
Afterwards: a monthly plan or independence
The takeover is a one-off job, but updates, backups and monitoring are ongoing. There are two ways forward:
- Monthly maintenance from 250 RON/month, where I carry on and you get a monthly report. I wrote about the prices and plans here.
- Running it yourself, where I show you what to watch out for, and from then on it is all yours. That is perfectly fine too.
When I say it is not worth patching
Not every site is worth taking over. If the theme is pirated or has been unsupported for years, if the page builder plugin is no longer developed, or if nobody knows how a custom system works, every single fix is risky, and the cost is unpredictable.
In those cases, after the health check I say that it is cheaper to rebuild, and show you where the difference comes from. It is better to say that at the start than after half a year of patching.
If you have a website and do not know what state it is in, I described what I take on in more detail on the existing website takeover page. Or write a few lines about your site, and I will tell you where I would start.
