Renaming after launch is not the same problem as naming at the start. You are moving something that already has links pointing at it, people subscribed to it, and search results built up under the old name. The sequence matters more than the name does.
Secure the whole set before you say a word
The single most common mistake is announcing early. The moment a new name is public, it is discoverable — and short, good names get taken by people who watch for exactly this.
Before anything becomes public: register the domain, take the handle on every platform you use and every platform you might, and take it on a couple you don't. Handles are free. The cost of finding your new name half-claimed on the platform you were about to move to is not.
Handles you already own are worth more than new ones
Most platforms let you change a handle in place, keeping the account, its followers and its history. That is almost always better than starting a new account, because the followers do not move by themselves and a fresh account starts at zero regardless of how many people knew the old one.
Two things to know before you do it.
- Your old handle is released when you change. Anyone can take it, immediately, and impersonation after a rename is a known pattern. If the old name matters, park it on a second account you control before you free it up.
- Old links to your profile break. Mentions, embeds, articles and anyone's bookmarks all pointed at the old handle. Some platforms redirect for a while; none do it forever.
The domain is the part that can be done properly
Unlike handles, a domain move can be made almost lossless, and the mechanism is the redirect. Do it per page, not to the homepage.
- Map every old URL to its equivalent on the new domain. Every one, not the top twenty.
- Use permanent redirects — 301s — page to page. A redirect that dumps everything on the new homepage loses most of the value of the old links and irritates the people following them.
- Keep the old domain registered and the redirects running. Not for a year. Indefinitely — it is the cheapest insurance in this entire process, and links live longer than anyone expects.
- Tell Google. Search Console has a change of address tool for exactly this, and it works better than leaving them to infer it.
Expect a dip in search traffic for a few weeks even when this is done correctly. Done correctly, it recovers. Done by pointing the old domain at the new homepage, a good deal of it doesn't.
The order
- Check the new name completely — domain and every handle — before committing to it.
- Register the domain and claim every handle, quietly.
- Park the old handles on accounts you keep, so nobody else takes them when you release them.
- Set up redirects and have the new site working before anyone is sent to it.
- Announce, and change the handles.
- Update every profile link, email signature, app store listing and anywhere else the old name is written down. This list is always longer than you think.
What you will forget
In roughly the order people discover them: the email domain, invoices and billing descriptors, DNS records for third-party services, OAuth callback URLs, the favicon, the app store listing, the physical printed thing in a drawer, and at least one page on your own site with the old name hard-coded into it.
Run the new name through a full check first. A rename you have to do twice because a handle wasn't free is the one genuinely avoidable disaster in this whole process.