Migrating website domain

I have recently changed the domain for this site from blog.ctfis.art to blog.raphlcx.com. It was part of an effort to consolidate my online presence and identity. This post shares the steps in performing the migration.

For context, the ctfis.art domain was registered on NameSilo, while Netlify manages the DNS records and website hosting.

So, the steps:

  1. Register the new domain, raphlcx.com, via a registrar. I used Cloudflare.

  2. On Netlify, register the new site or domain alias for the deployed project. But this time, I want to retain DNS records management on Cloudflare instead, so I opt out of Netlify DNS here.

  3. On Cloudflare, create a CNAME record for blog.raphlcx.com pointing to the Netlify deployed site.

  4. On NameSilo, revert to use its default name servers and configure a 301 permanent redirect from blog.ctfis.art to blog.raphlcx.com.

  5. Wait for a maximum of 48 hours for the DNS changes on NameSilo to be propagated. During this period, the site will be reachable from both domains. blog.raphlcx.com will be via Cloudflare DNS, while blog.ctfis.art via NameSilo, then Netlify DNS.

  6. Once the redirect is working, remove ctfis.art domain configuration on the Netlify deployed site and Netlify DNS.

  7. Disable auto-renewal for ctfis.art domain on NameSilo.

  8. On Google Search Console, migrate the site domain to the new domain name.

Netlify automatically provisions a TLS certificate for the domain it manages via Netlify DNS. For the previous domain name, I presume its certificate will fail to renew once it expires and be removed from Netlify eventually.