Launch & Post-Migration
By the time you reach this stage, your WordPress site is fully built in staging, and every part of the HubSpot to WordPress migration process (the content migration, integrations, workflows, etc.) have cleared staging QA.
Now’s the time to make the DNS switch. But this too is a process more than a step and generally breaks down into three tightly connected phases.
- Pre-launch readiness: This is where you lock down your final technical, SEO, and content checks, enforce your content freeze, align every stakeholder, and ensure your rollback plan is clear.
- Controlled go-live execution: Here, you switch DNS (the actual migration step!), activate SSL, run critical live smoke tests, and keep your backups and rollback plan on standby if needed.
- Post-go-live stabilization: In this phase, you monitor live traffic, verify SEO indexing, track site performance, validate business KPIs, and respond quickly to any issues that surface in the first hours or days.
Handled well, this three-part process turns all the months of migration effort into a perfect launch — almost invisible to your audience, with complete business continuity.
Here’s zooming in on this process, step by step.
Phase 1: Pre-launch readiness
This phase starts with stakeholder alignment.
Stakeholder alignment
After QA and just before go-live, it’s critical to align all stakeholders one last time. Make sure key stakeholders (project managers, developers, content owners, marketing, SEO, security, and hosting partners) are all looped in on the final launch plan.
Confirm everyone signs off on readiness: technical checks, content integrity, redirect mappings, DNS changes, fallback plans, and clear escalation paths if anything goes sideways. Also communicate exactly how “all clear” will be given and who owns that decision.
Double-check that everyone knows who owns final approvals, who monitors the live cutover, and how post-launch support will be handled in the first few hours and days.
Enforce content freeze
Communicate content freeze rules clearly to content stakeholders so there’s no more publishing beyond the deadline. However if there must still be some publishing, use delta migration: a scheduled final sweep that catches any posts or landing pages created between freeze and launch.
Technical verification
QA covers this, but before you flip the switch, a final technical check is essential. Remember: your staging environment should mirror production, but it’s still not production. Double-check that your theme, plugins, database, and server stack are versioned, up to date, and locked. Take final backups of your staging WordPress build and your final HubSpot export, and store them securely.
Content & SEO validation
In big migrations, your QA team tests redirects, content parity, and SEO signals during staging as part of the main QA phase. But just before go-live, enterprise SEO and content teams often do a final round: a last crawl, manual spot-checks, and validation of redirects and metadata in staging or pre-production.
Integration & forms testing
QA covers this, but it’s worth an extra check: Submit real test leads through every public form (contact, newsletter, and gated download). Confirm they route to the right CRM lists, trigger nurture flows, and fire off the right notifications. Also test any webhooks to third-party systems: live chat, support, event registration. Validate that tracking pixels and tags fire cleanly on each critical conversion page.
Security confirmation
Pre-launch security is about more than HTTPS. Verify that your SSL certificate is installed, domain-matched, and won’t expire in 30 days! Check all user roles and permissions: admins, editors, authors, custom roles. Run an up-to-date vulnerability scan. Double-check that all your security shields are up and running so your new site stays compliant with enterprise-level security standards and can withstand real-world attacks. Look into your firewall, CDN WAF rules, and DDoS protections.
Rollback plan
Verify you can restore your HubSpot instance (or keep it live behind a hidden URL) in case you must pivot mid-launch. Document the decision tree for rolling back and share it before cutover.
Phase 2: Controlled go-live execution
Here you start with changing the DNS.
DNS change management
When you’re truly ready, it comes down to DNS. Plan this step with precision: who has registrar credentials? Are your TTLs lowered so propagation happens quickly? Have you confirmed your DNS host’s change window aligns with your launch window? In global orgs, mismatched time zones can be problematic.
SSL & HTTPS activation
As soon as DNS resolves to your WordPress server, your SSL must be live. Validate with multiple browsers and devices: browsers now mark sites as “Not Secure” at the slightest slip. Watch for mixed content warnings: these happen when old hardcoded HTTP assets remain.
Production smoke testing
A clean staging pass is not enough. The moment DNS switches, test live. Hit top pages, submit every form, download gated assets, check analytics tags. This “catch-as-catch-can” test often reveals small environment-specific bugs that staging won’t show: hardcoded domains, edge cache misses, or plugin misfires.
Backup and rollback readiness
While launching, confirm again that you have a complete backup and the rollback plan at arm’s reach. Keep your rollback comms pre-drafted. If you need to restore or revert DNS, speed is everything.
Cache and CDN warmup
For high-traffic sites, warm your CDN edges before visitors arrive in force. A simple crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog can help prime caches. This protects performance and ensures your first visitors see a fast, polished site.
Activate monitoring
Turn on real-time uptime monitoring, server error tracking, and performance dashboards. Assign a dev or infra lead to watch logs for the first 12–24 hours. If you’re running autoscaling, keep an eye on server load to ensure your hosting stack flexes under real traffic.
Phase 3: Post-go-live stabilization
Performance monitoring
Once live, the real work is catching issues you didn’t see coming. Track page load times, database performance, and form submissions. If you see issues like abandoned conversions, act fast.
SEO & indexing validation
Submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console the same day. Watch crawl stats closely: indexing lags kill momentum. Spot-check top URLs and check that your redirect map works in production.
Success validation
Check performance immediately after launch. Are forms working? Are leads hitting the right CRM lists? Are conversions flowing as expected? Organic traffic may fluctuate at first as redirects settle and search engines re-index… that’s normal.
Also confirm that:
- Analytics and tracking pixels are firing as expected, with no gaps in reporting.
- Marketing automation sequences (welcome emails, nurture drips) trigger correctly from new sign-ups.
- Transactional systems (e.g., downloads, gated content, event registrations) still fulfill instantly.
- Site performance holds under real traffic, pages load quickly, and no caching issues appear.
Be transparent with stakeholders: share these early numbers against your HubSpot baselines to prove your new WordPress site is not only live but it’s capturing leads, protecting rankings, supporting your funnel, and ready to grow.
User feedback loop
Encourage your support, sales, and marketing teams to share frontline feedback during the first days and weeks. Monitor support tickets and live chat for patterns that point to hidden issues. Having a fast, structured way to collect, triage, and fix these user-reported snags.
Post-live QA
Even with the most rigorous staging QA, you should never assume “done means done” once you’re live. The reality of production always reveals edge cases.
Your post-live QA run should reuse your pre-launch QA checklist (but this time, you validate on the live production domain, under real DNS, real SSL, and real traffic).
Run a fresh full-site crawl and compare it against the staging crawl. Confirm that redirects, metadata, robots.txt, and sitemaps are exactly as planned. Test your most important conversion flows again: contact forms, lead magnets, downloads, and any connected third-party tools.
One extra step at this stage: monitor live logs for hidden issues, like plugin conflicts that only appear at scale, API calls that fail under traffic, or integrations that slow down unexpectedly. These subtle gaps may not appear in staging always but can break user experience in production.
