Old website rescue in Kingsport, TN Keep the site your customers recognize. Repair what is underneath it.
Your site still looks like your business and people still find you through it. Under the surface, the code is old, the phone layout fights the reader, the contact form may not be reaching anyone, and nobody is looking after the hosting. We repair that part and leave the part you recognize alone.
From $399, plus $20/month hosting. What each number buys.
Dustin Lifford. Twenty-plus years building for the web, from early-generation tools through modern frameworks and platforms. About Dustin
From one of these.
On a small business brochure site we repaired, the review found:
- a contact form that had never delivered a single message
- an icon file that was empty and being served from cache
- a domain with no protection against being spoofed
- some of the business's own information existing only inside images
All four were found before any work started. Those are launch checks, not business results. Whether the repairs changed the number of calls that business gets is not known, because it was not measured.
Read the anonymous write-upYou do not need to know what is wrong to know something is.
None of these require a technical opinion. If two or three of them describe your site, it is probably a candidate.
Nobody has answered the form in a long time
You are not sure whether the form on your contact page still goes anywhere. Often it does not, and nothing on the page tells you that. Neither does anything tell the person who filled it out.
It fights you on a phone
The page loads the desktop version shrunk down. Readers pinch, zoom, and slide sideways to find your phone number, and sentences get cut off at the edge of the screen.
Your hours, prices, or services live inside a picture
Someone put that information into an image years ago. Important text inside an image is harder to access and less reliable for search, and it cannot be selected, enlarged cleanly, or read aloud.
The phone number is not tappable
It is there on the page as text, but tapping it does nothing. Callers have to memorize it, switch apps, and type it in. Some of them will not bother.
You cannot reach whoever built it
The person or company that set it up is gone, out of business, or unreachable. You are paying a hosting bill to an account nobody can log into, and no one is applying updates.
Nothing has changed on it in years, and you would rather it stayed that way
You are not looking for a new look. Your customers know this one. You want the same site to work properly.
What stays familiar
There is no new design to approve.
This is a preservation job. The work uses your existing content and your existing visual identity. On a phone, the layout may adapt so the page is readable, while preserving the look.
- Your layout and look. The arrangement your customers already recognize stays recognizable.
- Your logo, colors, and type. Your visual identity carries over as it is.
- Your wording. We work from the copy already on the site, not new marketing language.
- Your page addresses. Existing URLs are preserved, with redirects for anything that has to move.
- Your photos. Reprocessed for the web, not swapped out for stock images.
- Your domain. Same address on the internet. You keep it in your name.
What changes
Everything behind the surface.
The visible page stays recognizable. The markup, the phone behavior, the contact path, and the hosting are rebuilt.
- The markup is rebuilt. Layout tables and presentational tags give way to semantic HTML and a single stylesheet.
- The page works on a phone. Readable down to a 320 pixel screen, with no sideways scrolling and tap targets big enough to hit.
- The phone number becomes tappable and the contact form is rebuilt so that it delivers. Failed sends are logged so an inquiry can be recovered.
- Information trapped in images becomes real text on the page, so it can be selected, enlarged, read aloud, and indexed.
- Images are converted to modern formats, sized for the screen they load on, and given alt text.
- Search basics are put in place: a unique title and description per page, canonical tags, a sitemap, and crawl rules.
- A favicon is built from your existing logo. Many of these sites never had one.
- Hosting moves to our server, delivered through Cloudflare's network, with an SSL certificate kept current and server security updates applied.
- Old links keep working. Anything that has to move gets a redirect, so existing links and bookmarks do not break.
What the base job covers, and what it does not.
The base price covers a specific, narrow job. Anything outside it is quoted separately, so the starting price stays honest.
In the base job
Eligible work uses the client's existing content and visual identity.
- An eligible brochure site of up to 10 pages
- One contact form
- Your existing content and visual identity, carried over as they are
- A phone layout that may adapt while preserving the look
- Hosting on our server, once the site is live, at the monthly rate below
Quoted separately
These are all real work we can do. They are not part of the base price.
- Redesigns
- Ecommerce
- Logins
- Booking systems
- Complex forms
- Substantial new copy
- Email migration
- Difficult content recovery
Two numbers, and what each one buys.
The rescue
Eligible brochure sites
Eligible brochure sites of up to 10 pages with one contact form start at $399. Larger sites, and anything on the quoted-separately list above, are priced after we look at the site.
The hosting
What the monthly fee covers
- Up to 2 GB of storage on our server
- An SSL certificate kept current
- Server security updates
- Delivery through Cloudflare's network
- A daily backup of the server, taken by our hosting provider
That list is the whole list.
Inside the monthly fee
Keeping the site served
The items above are what the $20 pays for: the space your site occupies, its certificate, the server's own security updates, and delivery through Cloudflare.
If the site goes down because of something on our side, the server, the container, the certificate, putting it back is our responsibility and is not billed to you. It is our server.
Billed hourly
Changes you ask us to make
Editing a page, changing a phone number, adding a photo, swapping out copy, adding a new section. Work you request on the site is hourly, whenever you want it.
Site changes and support are billed hourly and are not part of the monthly fee. We would rather say so here than surprise you with it later.
Hosting is month to month. There is no contract and no minimum commitment, on the hosting or on the rescue itself.
From first look to handoff.
Six steps. You hear from a person at each one, and your current site keeps serving visitors until the planned cutover.
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Review
We look at the live site: how many pages it really has, whether the contact form delivers, what information is trapped inside images, how it behaves on a phone, and where the domain is registered. You get told whether it qualifies.
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Scope and price
You get the scope and the price in writing before any work starts, including anything that falls on the quoted-separately list. If the honest answer is that you need a redesign instead, we say that.
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Rebuild
The pages are rebuilt with the same content and the same look, in semantic markup, on one stylesheet, readable down to a 320 pixel screen. Nothing is invented and no new marketing copy is added.
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Your review
You see the rebuilt site on a temporary address and compare it against the original before anything changes publicly. Where old code cannot be reproduced exactly, or where a repair requires a small adjustment, we show you and you decide.
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Planned cutover and verification
The switch happens at a time we agree on. Then every old address, every image, the phone layout at several widths, and the contact form end to end, including a real test message. Measured, not eyeballed.
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Handoff
You get a plain-language list of what was done, what you own, and the few items only you can do, such as claiming your business listing or submitting the sitemap. Each one says what happens if you skip it.
The full write-up, with what is not known.
The anonymous case study lists every verified finding and every completed repair on a small business brochure site, and states plainly that launch checks and business results are two different measurements. Only the first one was taken.
The things people actually ask.
Is this the same thing as an old website rescue?
Yes. Retromod Website Rescue is the name of our Old Website Rescue service. It keeps the look your customers recognize and rebuilds what is underneath.
Will my site look different afterward?
The look stays recognizable. Your logo, colors, type, wording, and layout carry over, and there is no new design. On a phone the layout may adapt so the page is readable without pinching and zooming.
Some details can shift. Old code sometimes relies on things that no longer behave the same way in current browsers, and a repair occasionally needs a small adjustment to work. When that comes up you see it at step 04 and you decide, rather than finding out after launch.
Do I have to approve a new design?
There is no design phase and no comps to review. You do review the rebuilt site on a temporary address before it goes live, and sign off on the cutover.
What if my site has more than 10 pages?
We can still do the work. The $399 starting price applies to eligible brochure sites of up to 10 pages with one contact form, so a larger site is quoted after the review.
What does the $20 a month actually include?
Up to 2 GB of storage on our server, an SSL certificate kept current, server security updates, delivery through Cloudflare's network, and a daily backup of the server taken by our hosting provider. That is the whole list. Site changes and support are billed hourly and are not part of the monthly fee.
Am I locked into anything?
No. Hosting is month to month, with no contract and no minimum commitment, and there is none attached to the $399 either. You also keep the domain, the code, and the content, so leaving is a matter of moving the site rather than recovering it from us.
What if the site goes down?
If it is down because of something on our end, the server, the container, the certificate, fixing it is our responsibility and it is not billed to you. It is our server, so it is our problem.
The hourly part is work you ask us to do on the site itself, like editing a page or adding a photo. Those are two different things and we do not want them confused.
Who owns the site when you are finished?
You do. The client retains ownership of the domain, the code, and the content, the same as on our web design work. Nothing is held back to keep you as a customer.
What happens to my email?
Email is handled case by case, and we check your mail records before and after the move, because some older setups point mail at the same name as the website. Moving email to a different provider is quoted separately.
Will this bring me more customers?
We do not promise that, and we would be guessing if we did. What we can tell you is exactly what was broken, what we repaired, and how we verified it. Whether that changes your phone volume depends on your market, and we do not measure your market.
How is this different from a rebuild or a redesign?
A redesign changes how the site looks and asks you to approve something new. This service deliberately does not. If what you actually want is a new look, that is web design and development, and it is quoted separately.
What do you need from me to start?
The web address, and whatever you know about where the domain is registered and who has access to it. If you do not know, that is normal and it is not a problem. Finding out is part of the review.
Tell us about the site. We will tell you if it qualifies.
This is a short intake, not an application, and the review costs nothing. If the site is not a fit for this service, we will say so and tell you what would actually help.
Sent to Tri-Cities AI Lab for review.
Or just call: (423) 967-5584
Rather just ask a person?
Send the web address in a message or read it to us over the phone. We will look at the site and tell you whether this service fits, at no charge.