Website Deployment Checklist

Every site or online property is different, but there are a few things to we recommend checking before going live:

1. Soft-Launch the Site to a Temporary Domain

• You need to be able to check everything on your site and, to do that, you'll want to access a version of it that's in a similar state to what it'll be once deployed.
  • Make sure the settings are as similar to your production settings as possible.
  • Check that you have crawling on this temporary domain turned OFF using a robots.txt file or other temporary measures.

2. Run a Link Checker

• Verify all the links and redirects are working correctly.
  • For MacOS, "Integrity" is a good free tool.

3. Check all the SEO things

• Ensure your robots.txt file is correct.
• Check that your sitemap xml file is correct.
• Verify your lighthouse scores to ensure page speed is optimal.
• Do a sanity check on your home page to make sure all the resources (such as images and videos) are optimized for speed.
• Check that your analytics tools are setup correctly and retest page speed after analytics are applied.
• Apply any 3rd party scripts and make sure they work properly.

4. Make Sure Content Updates Work Properly

• Publish content from the CMS and verify that it updates in a timely manner.
  • Some sites have near-instant updates and some sites require a build/test step that can take some time.
• Ensure your team knows what to expect when content changes on the live site and then verify it ahead of time.

5. Is Preview Mode Working?

• Preview mode is essential once your site is live to enable your content team to make changes and see what they'll look like BEFORE publishing. Confirm it works before going live.

That's a quick list of the checks we know most sites will need before deployment.

Have more ideas?  Let us know!