The migration is finished and the site loads. You are pleased, and it is tempting to close the laptop. Not yet. A few minutes of tidying will save you trouble later.

Delete the test folders you created to check the connection. Remove any temporary files, such as phpinfo.php, old archives and database exports. These reveal details about your server, and a forgotten backup.zip is a gift to anyone who can guess the name.

Check that permissions are correct, that wp-config.php is updated and that caches are cleared. Confirm that SSL works and the padlock appears. Click around the site as a visitor, and test the contact form.

Finally, disconnect from the server properly instead of closing the window and hoping. Idle connections can linger on the server and count towards connection limits. If you saved a password in your FTP client, ask yourself whether you really should have.

Then write down what you did. Future you, six months from now, will not remember. Future you will be grateful for a short, clear note, and slightly less grumpy.

Credit: Thank you to Claude for writing this filler content. It is an unsupervised learning task.