🛡️ Zero-Downtime Domain Migration: A Story of Rebranding This Site

🚀 TL;DR

I recently migrated my personal site from the long-time domain walkerrandolphsmith.com to the cleaner, sharper walkersmith.me.

✅ Zero downtime
✅ Seamless redirects
✅ Preserved SEO ranking
✅ Full HTTPS coverage

🎯 Why Migrate?

The domain walkerrandolphsmith.com served me well for over a decade — but it was long, hard to spell, and easy to forget. The new domain, walkersmith.me, is shorter, more memorable, and better aligned with my personal brand.

But this wasn’t just a vanity change. I needed to preserve uptime, avoid search ranking penalties, and make sure that every old link kept working.

🧩 What Was in Place

My site is hosted on Azure Static Web Apps. The old domain was managed through App Service Domains with an Azure DNS Zone.

Since Azure App Service Domains doesn’t support .me top-level domains (TLDs), I purchased walkersmith.me via GoDaddy.

I considered pointing the new domain’s APEX (@) to the static IP of the Azure Static Web App — but that would have bypassed Azure Front Door, limited performance and security, and created duplicate content across domains (a big SEO risk).

So I needed a robust, HTTPS-secure solution that gracefully redirected all traffic — including paths — to the new domain.

♟️ The Strategy

1️⃣ Set Up Azure Front Door in Front of the Old Site

Azure Front Door (AFD) became the global edge entry point.

  • Created a Front Door profile
  • Added both walkerrandolphsmith.com and www.walkerrandolphsmith.com as custom domains
  • Verified domain ownership and waited for TLS certificates to be issued automatically
  • In the Azure DNS Zone, I pointed:
    • @ (APEX) to the Front Door’s endpoint via alias A record
    • www to the Front Door via CNAME

Result: zero downtime, secure traffic, and a performant global edge.

2️⃣ Move walkersmith.me DNS from GoDaddy to Azure

  • Created a new Azure DNS Zone for walkersmith.me

  • Added both walkersmith.me and www.walkersmith.me as custom domains in Front Door

  • Completed domain validation and waited for HTTPS certificates to provision

  • In the Azure DNS Zone:

    • Pointed @ to the same AFD endpoint via alias A
    • Pointed www to the AFD endpoint via CNAME

    This step is critical to get right. Instead of immediately switching nameservers in GoDaddy, I first repeated everything from Step 1 for walkersmith.me:

    🛠️ I used commands like nslookup -type=CNAME walkersmith.me ns1-08.azure-dns.com to verify that all DNS records were correctly resolving through Azure’s authoritative name servers before flipping anything live.

  • Updated GoDaddy nameservers

This guaranteed no downtime during the switch and allowed Azure Front Door to immediately handle traffic once GoDaddy delegated authority.

3️⃣ Wait for Propagation 🧘

Name server changes can take up to 48 hours, but changes typically propagate within an hour.

In the meantime:

  • The old domain (walkerrandolphsmith.com) was already flowing through Front Door
  • The new domain (walkersmith.me) was ready behind the scenes
  • Once propagation completed, AFD began handling both domains seamlessly

4️⃣ Redirect with Rule Sets (301s)

  • Created a Rule Set named redirect-legacy in AFD
  • Added a rule to:
    • Match requests where the Host is walkerrandolphsmith.com or www.walkerrandolphsmith.com
    • Apply a 301 redirect to the same path on walkersmith.me

💡 This ensures deep links like /blog or /about redirect correctly — not just the homepage.

5️⃣ Canonical Tags

In the Next.js app, I added a <link rel="canonical"> tag for each page using dynamic metadata:

export const metadata = genPageMetadata({
  title: 'Blog',
  canonical: 'https://walkersmith.me/blog',
})

This signals to search engines which version of the content is primary and avoids duplicate indexing penalties.

🧪 Verifying the Redirects

You can use these tools to verify:

  • nslookup walkersmith.me → Shows Azure DNS nameservers
  • curl -I -L -v http://walkerrandolphsmith.com/blog → Follows:
    • 307 redirect (HTTP → HTTPS)
    • 301 redirect to walkersmith.me/blog
    • 200 response from the new domain

✅ Everything working — cleanly, transparently.

📣 Announcing the Move

Posted to social with:

🚀 New domain, same mission.
👉 https://walkersmith.me
🔁 Don’t worry — walkerrandolphsmith.com still works and redirects automatically.
#Nextjs #React #Azure #DeveloperLife

🔚 Final Thoughts

Domain migrations are often stressful, risky, and filled with SEO pitfalls.

But by leveraging:

  • ✅ Azure Front Door
  • ✅ Smart DNS delegation
  • ✅ Canonical metadata
  • ✅ Verified 301 redirects

You can modernize your brand without breaking a single link.

No downtime. No ranking drop.

Browse articles