THE ULTIMATE PRE-LAUNCH
CHECKLIST FOR WORDPRESS WEBSITES

WHAT’S ON YOUR WORDPRESS PRE-LAUNCH LIST?

Building and launching a WordPress website – whether for yourself or a client – is a lot of work. Many different parts have to come together to form a consistent whole and create a successful site. With so many things in the air, it’s easy to forget a few of them. While mistakes are almost always fixable, launch day should be a day of celebration and success for you and your client and not one of
disappointment and frantic scrambling for solutions.

Launching a WordPress website is a complex undertaking with many pieces and components to consider. Consequently, it can be overwhelming and confusing to put it all together.

Pre-launch checklists like this one are great productivity tools for anyone whose livelihood depends on building WordPress sites. They help get things done, make it less likely you forget something critical, and provide a good framework to get a website out the door.

Plus, having your own comprehensive checklist is a great investment into the future when you have to go and do it all over again.

Your Roadmap

To improve your chances of a positive outcome and, ultimately, success, it’s a good idea to have a road map of everything that needs to be done before a website sees the light of day.

That’s exactly what I want to give you with this pre-launch checklist for WordPress websites: A step-by-step template that makes sure you don’t forget any crucial steps on the journey to launch and allows you to make your site an instant success. Plus, I’ve broken everything into different categories; how neat is that?

WHY HAVE A PRE-LAUNCH CHECKLIST AT ALL?

You might wonder: “Why do I even need a checklist?” You might think: “A good website designer/developer/implementer should know this stuff by heart, right?

Are you really dependent on a crutch like a pre-launch list?” Well, having a checklist puts you into good company: Pilots, astronauts, surgeons, and other professionals in high-stakes occupations rely on them to do their work and perform at the highest level.

If it’s good enough for them, why not you? Apart from that, having a checklist enables you to offload some of the mental effort involved in website creation onto a piece of paper (or a computer file in this case) and thus frees up some capacity for creativity, decision making, and other, more important things.

Less thinking and dithering results in more action and higher productivity. What’s not to love about that? Furthermore, checklists help us break down a big task into smaller pieces, thereby making them less overwhelming and more organized. With a step-by-step list in place, it’s much harder to skip ahead or leave out something important.

Besides, nothing is more satisfying and motivating than checking off points on a to-do list, am I right? I don’t know about you, but that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

-- DOWNLOAD -- WordPress Ultimate Pre-Launch Checklist -- DOWNLOAD -- Ultimate Guide to WordPress PLUGINS

8 - PREPARE FOR LAUNCH

9 - BACKUP & SECURITY

10 - LAUNCH

11 - ORGANIZATION

1 - CONTENT

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” ~ Bill Gates 1996

CONTENT
Content is the heart of any website. It will let both users and search engines know what your site is about. It’s important to get content right from the start. The following points will help you do so.

REPLACE DUMMY CONTENT
Check your site for placeholder text (such as Lorem ipsum) and make sure the actual (client-approved) content is in place.

PROOFREAD
Nothing says “unprofessional” more than grammar and spelling errors, so double check all text on the site for mistakes and then check again.

FORMAT WRITTEN CONTENT
Layout is important to make your site attractive and easy to consume. Avoid big blocks of text, use paragraphs, and don’t forget about headings!

CHECK FOR PLACEHOLDER IMAGES
Any stand-in visuals should also be removed and replaced with actual images.

GO THROUGH VIDEOS AND AUDIO FILES
The latter also counts for other types of media. See that the right files are in the right place and that they are working properly.

EXAMINE PAGE LINKS
Make sure no link is broken, internal links point where they are supposed to, and external links open in a new tab.

CHECK DOWNLOADABLE FILES
If you have downloads, make sure they are proofread, linked to correctly and can in fact be downloaded.

SET UP A 404 ERROR PAGE
Though most themes have a default page for content that can’t be found, you should also consider setting up a custom 404 error page. Either way, make sure there is a page for those who get onto your site through a faulty link.

IMPLEMENT A CONTACT PAGE
Another important page visitors will appreciate is a contact page. Use plugins like Jetpack, Contact Form 7, and Fast Secure Contact Form to set up an easy way for users to communicate with you.

SET UP RE-DIRECTIONS
If there is need for any re-directions (such as to preserve link juice from an old site), make sure they are set up correctly. Redirection is an excellent tool for this.

PREPARE LAUNCH CONTENT
To help your website start off on the right foot, it can make sense to prepare some posts to share on social networks upon launch.

2 - DESIGN

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” ~ Milton Glaser

DESIGN
Good design ensures that web content is presented in the best way possible across different devices and user setups. This can often mean a lot more work, but it’s definitely worth it.

VALIDATE HTML MARKUP
To avoid incompatibilities, use tools like W3C’s Markup Validation Service to check all pages of your site adhere to web standards.

VALIDATE CSS
What goes for HTML is also valid for your styles, and you can use this tool for it.

PREVIEW SITE IN MAJOR BROWSERS
To spot cross-browser compatibility problems, view your site in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer/Microsoft Edge, and any legacy browser your client wants to support. Look especially at images and videos. An alternative is using a service like Browsershots.

CHECK RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Mobile is bringing in a lot of traffic these days and having a site that looks good on mobile devices is a must. To ensure an optimal user experience, test your design on different gadgets (both phones and tablets) and platforms (Android, iOS) and/or use something like MobileTest.me.

USE GOOGLE’S MOBILE TESTING TOOL
In addition to manual testing, Google also offers a mobile testing tool with lots of helpful feedback. Just input your URL and it will run a full analysis of your site.

OPTIMIZE IMAGES
Reducing image size as much as possible (without compromising quality, of course) will improve page load time and thereby user experience and SEO. TinyPNG and RIOT can do this for you.

ADD A FAVICON
Probably one of the most frequently forgotten parts of website design, a favicon appears in browser tabs and makes you look extra professional. Thankfully Favicomatic will easily create one for you.

LINK HEADER LOGO BACK TO HOMEPAGE
First of all, make sure your company logo is present in the header. Secondly, check that it links back to the starting page (of your actual site, not the development site) so users can return there quickly.

SET UP A PRINT STYLESHEET
For users who want to get your content down onto paper (because it’s just that good!), you can make the task much easier with a print stylesheet. The WordPress Codex can tell you how tocreate one.