Guidance on launching a new site to replace existing site on same Netlify account with a custom domain

Hi there,

I’m new to the Netlify platform, so I’m looking for a bit of guidance for an upcoming launch:

  • A previous developer created and launched a site for our client using Netlify. The site uses a custom domain.
  • We’ve now created a new site to replace this existing site. It’s set up as a new Netlify site on the same account as the existing site.
  • I’m looking for guidance on the process I’ll need to follow to deploy the new site using the custom domain that’s currently used by the old site.
  • I asked the “Ask Netlify” tool, and it looks like the process should be relatively simple. Almost too simple… :sweat_smile:. The asnwer was essentially just: Remove the domain from the old site, add the domain to the new site, deploy the new site.
  • Is it really that simple? No need to re-verify the domain when adding it back to the second site? I want to make sure I understand the process for launch day and have access to the resources I need (i.e. the people who control the domain if re-verification is needed)

Thanks,
Scott

Ask Netlify’s response is correct.

It turns out that Ask Netlify’s response was not correct at all.

The domain was apparently associated with the old site developer’s Netlify account, and there was zero indication of that in the Netlify UI. As a result, once we removed the domain from the old site, we were unable to add it to either our new site OR back to the old site. This threw a wrench in our entire launch, and resulted in us needing to stand up and landing page on a separate host until Netlify could address the issue for us.

Even if this issue hadn’t occurred, we still would have had to update DNS to point to the new site. This is a step I had assumed would need to happen, and was a big part of me not trusting the Ask Netlify information.

I’m pretty disappointed with how this all went down, especially given that I reached out well ahead of time to specifically try to avoid issues like this. I guess my takeaways are to continue to take AI tool responses with a grain of salt, and apparently do the same with Netlify Support’s advice.

@sdunham The Netlify system for removing a domain from an account to allow its use within another account is manual on their behalf and subsequently frequently causes drama.

As non-enterprise accounts are considered to be ‘self-service’, I requested that it be made self-service three years ago, but there’s been no movement on it.

It’s obviously worse in your case considering that you asked in advance in an attempt to avoid it.

I suspect the statement in your original post of “It’s set up as a new Netlify site on the same account as the existing site.” would have caused everyone, and the AI included, to presume you wouldn’t encounter the issue.

Before saying what you said (and in some way, offending the hours and efforts we put in to help users), it would be wise to check if there was absolutely no error on your end.

The information you gave:

  • You have a site in an account (site A)
  • You now wish to have a new site in the same account (site B)
  • The domain needs to be transferred from site A to site B

In this scenario, the above advise was 100% correct. You simply have to remove it from one site and add it to the other. This same process is followed by a lot of customers on a daily basis (including Enterprise), so the advice itself is 100% correct. There’s absolutely no DNS change required.

At no point in your question did you mention the domain or give us anything else to check. I assumed, you’ve done your side of checks and just don’t trust the AI (which was right in this case with the information you provided).

So, this:

looks like an issue with how your team was working together.

While this can be improved, it is also not expected to run into this situation. Not sure how your dev managed to add the domain to some other account or how you managed to add the domain to your original site in the first place. So the UI did not show any warning because this is not expected to happen. Something else went wrong here and that should be investigated.

This is 100% false (unless your domain was incorrectly configured).