No, not us. But we have a client retiring. As their web provider, that means we have some things to do.
G is not selling his business. He’s a consultant – he and his relationships ARE the business, and they are not particularly transferable and therefore not sellable. His business will scatter within the market, his site will be decommissioned, and he will enjoy his time in retirement.
But before he does, we have some work to do.
First of all, he has over ten years out there using his domain email address as a contact for many friends and family, and countless business cards out there. We don’t host his email, but simply forward it to a Gmail account, so the transfer of email archives to him is not an issue. But he wants to retain that email address, at least for a few years, as he gets the word out that his email address is now at Gmail. So, the domain will be retained for a couple of years. Unfortunately, the domain registrar he currently is at now charges for email accounts, even forwarding, so we will be moving the domain to another registrar that does not charge, and he will pay for the registration fees, and we’ll set up the new DNS with the forwarding.
Before we do that, we’ll discontinue the Google Analytics and Search Console accounts that have been set up for the domain. He no longer needs them nor wants the reports, so it is time to stop. We’ll keep what we have for the time being. We’ll keep a copy of the entire site, just in case, and send a copy to him in a zip file, and we’ll send him a link to the site history on Internet Archive if he wants to see it sometime in the future.
His retirement isn’t a surprise – he had told us last year he thought 2019 would be his last year in business. If this was a bigger site, a bigger organization, a transfer of business, the process would be more involved for us. We’re at a time where the businesses owned by baby boomers are going to be going through this, as more and more of them retire. G’s retirement has made us consider what else might be involved with more extensive web presence. We suspect a few more in the next few years for us. So it is good to lay out the process.
Thanks G, for getting us to think along these lines, and enjoy retirement!