Pre-Launch Website Checklist

A quick checklist to make sure your website is ready for 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
Page Titles are important; ensure they make sense and have relevant keywords in them.
Create metadata descriptions for important pages.
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

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
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/error pages
Create a favicon
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

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

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