An interior designer
She asked me for a new website. I gave her back the one she already had.
An interior designer needed her website to connect to the systems running the rest of her business, and the platform it sat on could not do that. All ten pages were rebuilt word for word at her own addresses, on a foundation that connects. The redesign still exists at a separate address, and nothing changes unless she asks for it.
- The business
- An interior designer
- The job
- Ten pages moved off a closed platform without changing a word
- What she owns
- Every page, and the code underneath them
The website was the good part, and that was the problem
Most of this work starts with a site that is letting someone down. Hers was not. She had spent months on ten pages, she liked them, and her customers were finding what they needed.
What the site could not do was connect. It sat on a closed platform, so the booking, the client records and the project tracking being built for the rest of her business had no way to reach it.
Moving forward looked like throwing away the part that already worked
The normal answer here is a redesign, and a redesign was drawn up. It was good. It was also going to cost her every page she had already gotten right, plus weeks of reviewing new copy for a site that was not broken.
That is a real cost, and it is the one nobody puts in the quote.
The decision that shaped it
Give her back the website she already loves, and make it good going forward.
All ten pages were rebuilt at her own addresses, every word taken from her own published copy. Not rewritten, not improved, not tightened. The same site, on a foundation that can reach everything else she runs.
The redesign was kept, at its own separate address, so she can look at it whenever she likes and nothing swaps until she says so.
A migration people can see is a migration people argue about. She should be able to move platforms and have her customers notice nothing at all.
What actually moved
- Ten pages, at her own addresses
- Home, about, services, her signature experience, contact, two sales pages, the freebie, the gift card form and the confirmation. Every address the same as before, so nothing anyone had bookmarked or linked to broke.
- One masthead and one footer
- Pulled out into a single shared piece, so a change to her navigation is one edit instead of ten.
- The redesign, parked and preserved
- Still live at its own address. Nothing was thrown away and nothing was forced on her.
- A real check at every width
- Every route loaded and read, and the layout swept across phone widths to confirm nothing sits off the edge of a screen. That is the standard on every build here.
Her customers see the site they always saw
Nothing about her website looks different to the people using it, which was the point. Underneath, it now sits on the same foundation as the booking and the client records being built alongside it, so those can finally reach each other.
The work she put into her own words is still her work. She did not have to spend it twice.
Can I move my website off a closed platform without redesigning it?
Yes. Rebuilding a site exactly as it stands, at the same addresses, is a normal piece of work and it is usually cheaper than a redesign, because nobody has to review new copy or re-approve a layout.
It is worth doing when the site is working and the platform is what is holding you back. Keeping the same addresses matters, because that is what protects the links, the bookmarks and the search results you have already earned.
She paid once, and the code is hers.
It is an asset her business holds, the same way it holds a van or a building. Nobody can end it by raising a price or going out of business, and that is the whole point of building it this way.
Tell me what yours is