How to divide website for business that is splitting?
I have a client which is a business started by two partners - they have decided to split the business and go their separate ways. What should happen with the existing company website (oldwebsite.com)?
It seems they have a few options, none of which are great:
Keep the oldwebsite.com domain name and have a holding page which explains that the company has split. Then have links to each new website. This seems like quite a negative message for clients but at least keeps some google page rank and their business presence that has taken 10 years to build.
Redirect the oldwebsite.com domain to just one of the news guys business (I assume this would be completely unnacceptable, but included for the sake of completeness). Great for one, terrible for the other partner.
Remove oldwebsite.com completely - anyone who tries to follow a link to oldwebsite.com or types it into a browser will end up with a message from their browser telling them that the website can't be found. Fairly terrible for both partners.
Are there any other possibilities? Has anyone had a similar situation?