48. What to Archive When You Redesign Instead of Deleting

A redesign is often treated as a chance to delete the old site and feel tidy. Tidy is pleasant. Missing records are not. The old site contains prices you once published, pages other people have linked to, proofs of work, and wording a customer may still wave at your counter. Archive first, then remove what the public no longer needs. Deleting without an archive is how a small company forgets its own promises and breaks links it did not know existed.

An archive is not a second website you must beautify. It is a stored copy you can open when someone asks what the old page said, plus a plan for the addresses people still use. You can keep it in a folder, in a private backup, or on a hidden address that is not linked from the menu. The point is that you can retrieve it without begging a former vendor who has moved on.

<>

Save the old site before the new one replaces it

Before the switch, ask for a full backup of files and of the content, and download it to a place you control. Open the backup once so you know it is not an empty folder. Export any blog or product list to a format you can read without the old system, such as a document or a spreadsheet, if that export exists. Take a simple copy of the key public pages as well, by saving them or printing to PDF, so you can read the old offer even if the backup is fiddly. Note the date of this snapshot. An undated archive becomes a rumour.

Include the unglamorous pieces. Forms and where they sent mail. The list of addresses. The analytics property, so you do not lose history just because the design changed. Images in their original sizes, not only the cropped ones on the page. Staff photos and customer photos should be in that set only if you still have the right to hold them. An archive is not an excuse to keep personal data you no longer need. Keep the business record. Release what you should not hoard.

Decide what stays public, what redirects, and what sleeps

Go through the old map with a pen. Some pages should survive because the offer survived. Some should redirect, because people and posters still use the old address, but the new page is the right destination. Some can sleep in the archive because they were campaigns, expired jobs, or drafts that were never meant to be permanent. Sleeping means not linked and not indexed if you can help it, but not destroyed. Redirecting means the old address opens the new page automatically. That is a kindness to anyone with a bookmark, a QR code on a carton, or a citation you forgot.

• A backup you have opened, stored outside the vendor's only laptop.
• A readable export of products, articles, or prices.
• A list of old addresses and where each one should go.
• Original images and logo files, not just screenshots.
• A note of what you deliberately did not keep, and why.

Write the redirect list in a spreadsheet a non-developer can read. Old address, new address, reason. The person doing the technical work will thank you, and you will catch mistakes such as sending an old price page to the homepage with no explanation. For a page whose offer expired, a short note on a new URL is better than a silent jump to an unrelated promotion. People can accept that a bundle ended. They resent a trick.

<>

Keep legal and commercial traces

Terms, refund rules, and published prices are the pages most likely to be quoted back at you. Archive them with dates. If a dispute arrives about a booking made under the old rules, you want the wording from that month, not your memory of it. You do not need to leave outdated terms on the live site where they will confuse new customers. You need them in the folder. Mark them clearly as historical so nobody pastes them back onto the homepage by mistake.

Delete from the public site. Do not delete from the company's memory. Those are different actions.

Emails and invoices are not a substitute for the page archive. They rarely contain the full menu, the full set of images, or the way a form was worded. Keep them for their own reasons, and still keep the site snapshot. If you are registered for tax or you issue e-invoices, follow the retention you already use for financial records. The website archive should not be weaker than the shoebox you finally replaced.

<>

Hand the archive to the next person on purpose

Put the folder path, the redirect spreadsheet, and the snapshot date into the handover notes. A future redesign will start cleaner if it can see the previous one. Schedule a look at the redirects three months later. Some old addresses will turn out to be unused. Some will be surprisingly busy, which means a poster is still in the wild. Leave those redirects in place until the printed trail is gone.

Tidiness can come after that. When a year has passed and a campaign archive has no legal or commercial use, you can thin personal data and duplicate files. Do it deliberately, with the same list, not in a burst of desktop cleaning on a Friday. A redesign should feel lighter to customers because the new pages are clearer, not because the business developed amnesia. Archive, redirect, then delete in public. In that order, a new site is a step forward rather than a hole.