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:ballot_box_with_check: A checklist for launching a website

Website Launch Checklist

A checklist of tasks to do before launching a public website.
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Table Of Contents

  • Checklist
    • Pre-Launch
    • Post-Launch
    • Launch
    • Ongoing
  • Suggestions
  • Copyright and Attribution

Checklist

Launch preparation generally takes a day or more. You should also reserve a day for bugfixing after you have wrapped the last feature. Be sure to plan accordingly!

Pre-Launch

  • [ ] Content and Style

    • [ ] Typography and layout

      • [ ] Check for incorrect punctuation marks, particularly apostrophes, quotation marks and hyphens/dashes

      • [ ] Check headings for where you could potentially use ligatures

      • [ ] Check for widow/orphan terms in important paragraphs

  • [ ] Spelling and grammar

  • [ ] Consistency

    • [ ] Capitalisation (especially of main headings)

    • [ ] Tense/Style of writing

    • [ ] Recurring/common phrases (e.g. ‘More about X’ links)

    • [ ] Variations in words (e.g. Websites vs Web Sites, or UK vs US spelling)

    • [ ] Treatment of bulleted lists (e.g. periods or commas at end of each item)

  • [ ] Check for hard-coded links to staging domain (i.e. ensure all links will change to ‘live’ URL/domain when site is launched)

  • [ ] Ensure no test content on site

  • [ ] Check how important pages (e.g. content items) print

  • [ ] For re-designs, ensure important old/existing URLs are redirected to relevant new URLs, if the URL scheme is changing

  • [ ] Check all ‘Hidden Copy’ (e.g. alt text, transcriptions, text in JavaScript functions)

  • [ ] Standards and Validation

    • [ ] Accessibility
    • [ ] HTML validation
    • [ ] JavaScript validation
    • [ ] CSS validation

  • [ ] Search Engine Visibility, SEO and Metrics

    • [ ] Disable Indexing On Development Server

    • [ ] Page Titles are important; ensure they make sense and have relevant keywords in them.

    • [ ] Create metadata descriptions for important pages.

    • [ ] Check for canonical domain issues (e.g. variations in links to http://site.com http://www.site.com http://www.site.com/index.html should be reduced to a single consistent style)

    • [ ] Ensure content is marked-up semantically/correctly (h1, etc.)

    • [ ] Check for target keyword usage in general content

    • [ ] Check format (user/search engine friendliness) of URLs

    • [ ] Set up Analytics, FeedBurner, and any other packages for measuring ongoing success

    • [ ] Create an XML Sitemap

    • [ ] Configure Google Webmaster Console and Yahoo! Site Explorer

    • [ ] Sharing & Rich Snippets

      • [ ] Create a share card using Photopea or a similar tool

      • [ ] Set up Facebook meta tags & validate here

      • [ ] Set up Twitter meta tags & validate here

    Facebook Tag 

    <meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="${SITE_NAME}">
<meta property="og:description" content="${SITE_DESCRIPTION}">
<meta property="og:image" content="${SHARE_CARD_URL}">
<meta property="og:title" content="${PAGE_TITLE}">
<meta property="og:url" content="${PAGE_URL}">

    Twitter Tag

    <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="${SITE_NAME}">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="${SITE_AUTHOR}">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="${SITE_DESCRIPTION}">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="${SHARE_CARD_URL}">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="${PAGE_TITLE}">
<meta name="twitter:url" content="${PAGE_URL}">

  • [ ] Functional Testing

    • [ ] Check all bespoke/complex functionality

    • [ ] Check search functionality (including relevance of results)

    • [ ] Check on common variations of browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc.), version (6, 7, 2.2, 3.1 etc.) and platform (Windows, OSX, Linux)

    • [ ] Check on common variations of Screen Resolution

    • [ ] Test all forms (e.g. contact us, blog comments), including anti-spam features, response emails/text, etc.

    • [ ] Test without JavaScript, Flash, and other plug-ins

    • [ ] Check all external links are valid

    • [ ] Run the site through Google's PageSpeed Insights

    • [ ] Write a script to load test your site

  • [ ] Printer Friendliness

    Dynamic sizing, dark backgrounds, and interactivity don't play well with printers.

    • [ ] Pick one option to solve this:

      • [ ] Make a print stylesheet using a @media print {} media query, then add it to your site with <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/print.css" media="print">
      • OR
      • [ ] Use your browser's dev tools to remove offending elements (like sticky footers), alter colors where needed, and [screenshot the entire page] (https://stackoverflow.com/a/14830242).

    • [ ] Add a link to the printer-friendly version to your website.

  • [ ] Browser and mobile compatibility

    • [ ] Use BrowserStack to confirm that your site is compatible with the browsers you wish to support

    • [ ] Using BrowserStack's mobile device emulators and/or your own mobile device, confirm that:

      • [ ] Scrolling is easy

      • [ ] Nav bar works

      • [ ] Hoverable things are tappable

      • [ ] Charts and maps look ok

  • [ ] Security/Risk

    • [ ] Configure backup schedule, and test recovery from backup.

    • [ ] Protect any sensitive pages (e.g. administration area)

    • [ ] Use robots.txt where necessary

  • [ ] Security/Penetration test

    • [ ] Turn-off verbose error reporting

    • [ ] Check disk space/capacity

    • [ ] Set-up email/SMS monitoring/alerts (e.g. for errors, server warnings); consider internal and external monitoring services

  • [ ] Performance

    • [ ] Load test

    • [ ] Check image optimisation

    • [ ] Check and implement caching where necessary

    • [ ] Check total page size/download time

    • [ ] Minify/compress static (JavaScript/HTML/CSS) files

    • [ ] Optimise your CSS: use short image paths; make full-use ‘cascading’ nature of CSS, etc.

    • [ ] Check correct database indexing

    • [ ] Check configuration at every level (Web server, Database, any other software e.g. Content Management System)

    • [ ] Configure server-based logging/measurement tools (e.g. database/web server logging)

  • [ ] Finishing Touches

    • [ ] Create custom 404 & 500 & other error pages

    • [ ] Favicons

      • [ ] Create a favicon

      • [ ] Add favicons and Apple touch icons (http://www.favicomatic.com/)


Post-Launch

  • [ ] Marketing

    • [ ] Social Marketing: Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc.

    • [ ] Submit to search engines

    • [ ] Set-up PPC/Google Adwords where necessary

    • [ ] Check formatting of site results in SERPs


Launch

  • [ ] Deployment

    • [ ] Create a production deployment

    • [ ] Double check that production-level resources have been provisioned

    • [ ] Purchase your domain and create the DNS record to point it at your production deployment

    • [ ] Ensure HTTPS / SSL is correctly set.

  • [ ] Web Search Indexing

    • [ ] Allow indexing of your production site

    • [ ] Redirect the www subdomain to your root domain

    • [ ] Set a canonical URL to prevent duplicate search results

  • [ ] Google Analytics


Ongoing

  • [ ] Monitor and respond to feedback (direct feedback, on Social Media sites, check for chatter through Google, etc.)

  • [ ] Check analytics for problems, popular pages etc. and adjust as necessary

  • [ ] Update content

  • [ ] Optional: Set up relevant Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics


Suggestions

We'd love to hear 'em. Open an issue

Copyright and Attribution

Credits To ;

Copyright (c) 2022 MarketingPipeline. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

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:ballot_box_with_check: A checklist for launching a website

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