WordPress Redesign: What to Keep and Change

While working on CMX’s WordPress redesign, we found a few problems that were easy to miss just by looking at the pages. Some older articles still described services we’d stopped offering. A link on our new service page opened the right guide but didn’t take readers to the section we’d promised. We caught it when we followed the link ourselves.

The link was a quick fix. The older articles needed more thought, since people could still find them through search or saved links. Both discoveries gave us a reason to look more closely at what the site already did well before deciding what to change. If you’re planning a WordPress redesign, that’s a useful place to begin.

Start with what’s actually wrong

Before choosing a new theme, spend a few minutes using your current site like a visitor. Open it on your phone and look for a service you know is listed there. See whether you can reach the contact form without hunting through the menu. Then sign in to WordPress and try changing something ordinary, like a price. That second test tells you how much work your team faces whenever the business changes.

You might find the site easy to edit while visitors struggle to find what they need. Or maybe it looks fine to visitors, but changing a few lines takes too long. Start with the sections causing trouble. If the same problems keep coming up across the site, a larger rebuild may make sense.

Make a note of the problems you find, with a few examples you can show the person working on the site. Then look at the pages behind those problems. Some may need a new design, while others just need clearer information or a better link.

Find the pages worth keeping

Start by looking through the pages you’ve already published. Your WordPress page list and sitemap can help you find older articles that are easy to forget about. Search Console and analytics, if you use them, can show which pages still get visits from Google or other places. That gives you a better idea of what deserves attention before you sketch a new homepage.

Read each important page and ask what someone is trying to do there. If a service page brings in visitors from Google but feels cramped on a phone, improve the layout and keep the useful information. Its URL can usually stay if the page still serves the same purpose. If two guides answer the same question, compare their content and search queries before combining them. Older pages promoting a service you no longer offer need a closer look at incoming links and what readers expect to find.

At CMX, some articles still referred to services we’d retired as the business moved on from its chat-community roots. Updating the navigation didn’t change those older promises. We read the articles in context and checked where their links led. Our guide to reviewing older pages and website structure explains that work in more detail.

A page with few visits may still answer a useful question, especially if other websites link to it. Check those links before you remove the page or change its address.

What should happen to your URLs and SEO?

Once you know which pages are staying, look at their web addresses. A new design usually doesn’t require a new URL if the page still serves the same purpose. Keeping the address saves you from fixing links that already work.

When a page does move, list its old address beside the new one and set up a permanent redirect, usually a 301 or 308, if there’s a relevant replacement. Open the old link yourself to see where it lands. Sending every retired page to the homepage can leave people far from the information they wanted. Google’s site-move guidance explains how to handle changes to URLs.

Test important links by clicking them where readers see them, especially when a link promises to jump to a particular section. The page might open normally even though a missing heading ID sends people straight to the top. Try our direct link to the website ownership and handoff section to see how it should work.

If you’re worried about losing SEO during a WordPress redesign, compare your important pages before and after the work. Keep the information people came for, review page titles and headings, and check that useful internal links still reach those pages. Save a record of the search queries and URLs bringing visitors before launch. Rankings can still move during significant changes, but you’ll have evidence to investigate a drop instead of guessing at the cause.

Choose WordPress tools your team can live with

Next, look at the tools behind those pages. Before replacing the theme or page builder, check which WordPress plugins your site relies on and whether they work with the proposed version and new theme. Pay extra attention to the ones running forms or bookings. Look for plugins that no longer receive updates, and find out whether any layouts depend on custom code. Test those features in a preview before changing the tools behind them.

CMX faced this choice years before our latest redesign. Our public landing pages were once built as separate HTML files, while the blog already ran on WordPress. Around 2023, developers rebuilt those pages in Elementor with support from an SEO specialist and a server engineer. The logged-in software platform remained separate. Public pages became easier for us to edit, although WordPress needed more maintenance. The old HTML pages felt a little faster to us, but we don’t have comparable speed measurements from that period.

Ask the person maintaining the new site to edit a real page in the preview, then show you how to undo a mistake. Find out who manages the hosting and when someone last checked that a backup could be restored. Those details are easier to sort out while the people who built the site are still around.

Put real content into the new design

The way your team edits pages matters when you’re planning the design, too. Layouts can look fine with placeholder text and fall apart when you add the real service names and explanations. A heading might wrap awkwardly on a phone or push a button out of place. Forms need the same care, especially when somebody makes a mistake and needs to know how to fix it.

Use the real text while building the design, then check the important pages on a phone. Try the menu and fill out a form with the on-screen keyboard open. See if you can use the controls without a mouse. If a layout makes those tasks difficult, fix it before repeating it across the site.

We worked on the copy and layouts together when redesigning CMX’s service pages in 2026. The CMX blog needed a slightly different approach because people spend longer reading there. Its progress line stays thin, and readers can open the contents list when they need it. We kept the bookmark beside the other reading controls so it stays out of the article’s way. Trying those details on real pages helped us decide what felt right.

Test the preview before anyone sees the new site

Once the new pages take shape, try them on a staging site if you can. That’s a separate copy where you can check the design without changing the website visitors already use. Keep a current backup of the live site and make sure somebody knows how to restore it if launch day goes wrong.

If your site takes orders or bookings, decide how to move the finished changes from staging to the live website. People can keep placing orders or booking appointments while the preview is being built, and replacing the live database with an older copy could erase those records. Agree on how to protect them before launch. Keep staging out of public search results, and make sure those restrictions don’t carry over to the live site.

Use the preview for more than looking at pages. Submit an inquiry and check the inbox or system where it should arrive. If people book appointments, make sure a test booking appears in the calendar staff use. Try an invalid form entry too, so you know visitors can understand what went wrong. A success message on the screen doesn’t prove the business received anything.

Your WordPress redesign checklist before launch

Before launch, go through these checks with the people who use and maintain the site. Write down what you tested and who’s responsible for fixing anything that fails.

• Important pages: open the key services and articles on desktop and phone. Read the real content, including the bottom of each page.
• Old and new links: follow redirects and test links that jump to a named section. Make sure each destination answers what the link promised.
• Search settings: in WordPress, open Settings → Reading and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” isn’t checked on the live site. Review page titles, the XML sitemap, other indexing rules, and canonical URLs, which tell search engines which address is preferred. The live site shouldn’t keep the staging site’s search restrictions.
• Forms and bookings: submit a real test and verify it reaches the intended inbox or system. Try an error case too.
• Editing and recovery: make a routine change in the new WordPress setup. Confirm that backups exist and someone knows the recovery steps.
• Mobile and accessibility: test menus and interactive controls at smaller widths, with keyboard navigation where it matters.

On CMX’s new WordPress service page, we checked its sitemap entry and search settings, then reviewed the published layout at phone, tablet and desktop widths. That helped us catch problems with the page, but those checks don’t tell us whether Google indexed it. Search Console’s URL Inspection tool gives a separate look at what Google knows about the address.

Keep checking after launch

After launch, open the actual pages on your phone and repeat the tasks you tried in staging. Check that forms deliver messages and that links from older articles still lead somewhere useful. If you use analytics, make sure visits and any form-submission tracking are still being recorded on the live site. Run a speed test on your most important pages, then watch Search Console for indexing and search-query changes over the following weeks. Reports take time to update, so compare them with your earlier records instead of judging the redesign from one quiet day.

Our redesign left a few improvements people can see for themselves. Older service references now point to relevant pages, and the heading link from the start of this article lands in the right place. Readers can also try the blog’s reading controls. We reduced one WordPress hero image’s file size, too. We haven’t measured whether these changes affected search traffic or customer inquiries, so we won’t claim they did.

At the end of your own redesign, go back to the problems you wrote down and try the same tasks again. Can visitors find the right information? Can your team make an everyday update without trouble? Those answers tell you whether the work helped. If you’re getting outside help, ask how the team plans to test the site and who looks after it once it’s live. Our WordPress redesign services page explains how CMX approaches the review, preview, launch and handoff.