At SimpliWeb, one of the most common things we do for new customers is help them move from their old website to their new one with us. It sounds simple, but there’s a big challenge that comes with it: making sure old links don’t break.
When someone clicks a link from Google or an old bookmark, they expect it to work. If it doesn’t, they see a “404 – Page Not Found” error. Too many of those errors and your visitors get frustrated, and search engines take notice — which can hit your rankings.
Because our WaaS model is built around handling everything for our customers, we’ve developed a smooth process for dealing with this during migrations. Behind the scenes that means making sure every old link is either still valid or has a redirect in place to the correct page on the new site.
Introducing URL Compare Checker
To make the process faster and more reliable, we built a WordPress plugin called URL Compare Checker.
What the plugin does
The plugin is designed for developers and agencies but is useful for anyone doing a migration. You can:
- Fetch URLs from an XML sitemap or paste a list of old URLs manually
- Run a bulk check against the new site to see which URLs return 200, which redirect, and which return errors (404, 500, etc.)
- Filter results by status code and export the results to CSV
- Use the CSV to plan and add redirects to your .htaccess file or a redirect plugin before launch
How it fits into our process
For our customers, this tool is part of the migration workflow we run on every site move. Instead of guessing which pages might break, our developers run a full check and build the required redirect map. That means when your new site goes live, visitors and search engines land where they should.
Why this matters
Site moves can be stressful. Broken links are one of the easiest things to miss and one of the hardest to clean up after the fact. By using a simple, repeatable tool like URL Compare Checker we remove the guesswork — saving time and preventing lost traffic.
Try it yourself
The plugin is free and open source. If you’re a developer working on migrations, you can download it and try it in your workflows:
Download URL Compare Checker on GitHub
If you’d prefer we handle the migration for you, SimpliWeb includes migrations as part of our service. We’ll run the checks, put redirects in place, and make sure your launch is smooth: