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10-07-2009, 04:50 PM
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  Old  Website Launch Checklist

Seb's Website Launch Checklist


It is important to have a good routine when launching a new website. The last few details of the launch can make all the difference to the satisfaction of your visitors and the management of your website. You shouldn’t be guessing these last minute things, rather, doing them from a checklist; I do at least. Here is the checklist I use. I have taken and adapted it from a blog post I made a while ago. Some of it may seem trivial, but if you've launched a number of websites, you may likely have forgotten one of these. There are perhaps a few things missing, so drop a response and I'll add it in if appropriate.

Meta Tags
Be sure to have your meta tags in place from the start. This is important for SEO. Here is an example of the meta tags I used for a website of mine. You can choose to use less, or more of these:

Code:
    <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <meta name="description" content="Coded Preview is a fast, free app that lets you generate preview pages to display web designs in a browser - the first dedicated app to provide such a service!" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="coded preview, code preview, preview coded, preview code, code, preview, html preview, design draft, template preview, coded" />
    <meta name="email" content="support@codedpreview.com" />
    <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
    <meta name="revisit-after" content="7 Days" />
www. Redirection
Use a .htaccess file to redirect either site.com to www.site.com or vice versa. My preference is to redirect to www.site.com.

Valid Code
Make sure your code is well-formed, valid and not broken in any way. Be sure to check it in all the main browsers to see if it is cross-browser compatible.

You can check the validation of your HTML here: http://validator.w3.org/
And your CSS here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Fav Icon



A small but sneaky one (literally). A fav icon is the small icon that appears in your browser address bar when you visit a website, as shown above. Make sure you have your fav icon uploaded (this is normally done by simply uploading a 16x16px .ico file to the public_html directory). To create a .ico file from another image type, use http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/.

Ad Implementation
If you plan to monetize your site with a CPC (eg. Google Adsense), you may want to make sure you’ve got all your necessary ads in place. However, this may not be a good idea. If your visitors first visit your site and see it crammed full of ads, it may put them off. I sometimes like to bring ads in a few months after the launch, when you should already have loyal users. If you are going to use ads from launch, be tasteful.

Contact Form
It’s important to make sure your site has a contact form, especially from the beginning of it’s launch, when most bugs will be found and feedback given. It's all very well reaching your visitors, but that doesn't mean a great deal if they can't reach you.

Logo Linked?
Another sneaky one that can easily be forgotten about; make sure your site’s logo is linked to the homepage! This allows visitors to get straight back to the homepage with a simple click.

Traffic Monitoring System
Make sure you have some kind of traffic monitoring system (eg. Google Analytics) from the start of your launch, so you can watch your site’s traffic increase.

Sitemaps
My least favourite thing to do, because it can take a while if you’re doing it for a big site: Sitemaps. Sitemaps are important for SEO and helping search engines to find your pages. I normally generate mine with Google’s Sitemap Generator.

Spell Check
Make sure all your copywriting has been proof-read and spell-checked. If your writing is full of mistakes, your visitors may fail to take you seriously.

Emails (eg support@domain.com)
Make sure you have all your necessary contact emails setup, whether it be admin, support, feedback, abuse; make sure they’re all setup and ready to be emailed to.


~ Thanks for reading. Hope you will find this useful!

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