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Inventory the Subdomains Before the Redesign Ships
Find owners, dependencies, certificates, links, and retirement decisions for a multi-subdomain website estate.
**Published: September 9, 2026**
A homepage redesign can look complete while support, careers, documentation, or campaign subdomains still carry old navigation and broken brand assumptions.
Assemble evidence from several sources
Combine DNS records, certificate inventories, analytics, search properties, known integrations, and stakeholder input. For every hostname, record purpose, platform, technical owner, content owner, authentication, and current status.
Decide instead of merely listing
Classify each host as keep, migrate, redirect, restrict, or retire. Document cross-domain navigation, cookies, forms, canonical rules, and brand assets that depend on the choice. Unknown ownership is a risk, not approval to delete.
Verify the release boundary
Test intended public hosts directly and confirm that retired ones follow the approved route. Check certificates and representative links. Preserve evidence for systems outside the web team's access and assign an owner to close each gap.
Further reading
Plan a review environment matrix
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Use the inventory to prevent an attractive redesign from fragmenting the wider estate.