The Complete WordPress Launch Checklist for Developers

The excitement is building and you are about ready to go live with a new WordPress website. The WordPress site you are about to launch could be for yourself, a client or a friend, and you don't want to make a mistake and forget something. With this complete WordPress launch checklist, you should be able to avoid and prepare for any number of scenarios.

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SolidWP Editorial Team
The excitement is building and you are about ready to go live with a new WordPress website. The WordPress site you are about to launch could be for yourself, a client or a friend, and you don’t want to make a mistake and forget something. With this complete WordPress launch checklist, you should be able to avoid and prepare for any number of scenarios. wordpress launch checklist

A WordPress Launch Checklist for Developers

  1. Have you removed the default content that came with WordPress during install? (Hello World! post, Sample Page, etc.)
  2. During your development process did you ever use any placeholder or lorem ipsum text while waiting for the content to be added?
    Pro Tip: Choose a default lorem ipsum block of text to use on all your sites so that you only have to do a single “Search All” before launching and you will always find all of your placeholder text that might have remained in a hidden corner.
  3. In the same manner, make sure any placeholder images have also been properly replaced with the correct images.
    Pro Tip: To protect yourself and your client, make sure you have the proper licenses to use any images on your website.  You may find a website like TinEye to be helpful in locating where an image came from if you are unsure of its origin.
  4. Proofread till your eyes fall out (or until you pay a professional).  Make sure the grammar, spelling, punctuation and capitalization are correct BEFORE you launch or go live.
  5. Have you clicked on EVERY link on your site? You should have clicked on every major link and then use a plugin like Broken Link Checker to verify the integrity of ALL the links on your site.  Also, check to see that downloads work, embedded videos play and forms correctly submit.
  6. Does your WordPress site contain a useful 404 Error page that is helpful in getting site visitors back on track?
  7. Check and see if someone comes to your website and wants to get in contact with you (or your client) … is it easy to do? Do you have an easy to find contact page?
  8. Have you checked that the autoresponders and funnel email steps are all working and sending correctly?  There’s nothing worse than working hard to build your email list only to find out three months later that nobody was receiving any of the auto-generated emails.
  9. Have you set up an email collection system to build the email list for the site? If there is no method in which visitors to your site can request updates or to be informed of what is happening, you need to immediately build out this funnel before launching.
  10. Have you clicked on EVERY social sharing link to make sure it works correctly and places the appropriate placeholder content?
  11. Have you visited and verified that every social account profile linked from the website is professional and ready to receive inbound visitors from the site?
  12. If you are launching a site that is going to replace an older website, have you set up redirections for links that existed on the old site? Using the Redirection plugin can be a big help in this area.
  13. Do you have a Welcome to the new site! type of content (a blog post, a header notification, a sidebar description, etc.)?  It is especially important that you have this type of content for a site you are relaunching so that repeat visitors won’t be so disoriented when they visit the site after the change.
  14. Did you remember to include a print.css stylesheet that customizes the look of the site when visitors go to print off a blog post or article?
  15. Validate ALL THE THINGS!!!!! Have you validated the HTML markup and the CSS styles?
  16. Have you tested how the WordPress site looks on different mobile devices and different browsers?
  17. Have you checked to make sure all of your images are completely optimized to the lowest size without losing quality?
    Pro Tip: Using Google’s PageSpeed Insights Analysis Tool can tell you many things that can help speed up your site, but it can also show you all the images on your site that still need to be optimized.
  18. Did you remember to create a favicon for the site? Use Favicomatic to dynamically generate all the code and favicon versions for your site.
    Pro Tip: Many developers like to create one favicon for the front of the site and a different favicon for the WordPress admin side of things to make it easy to differentiate. This tip can also be used when you have a development site and a live site to help remember which version of the site you are editing.
  19. How does your RSS feed look in different feed readers? Is there any additional content you might need to add through a WordPress hook for people subscribing to the site’s feed?
    Pro Tip: Check out all of these WordPress hooks that can be used to customize and filter what the RSS feed will look like and contain for subscribers.
  20. Have you properly configured an SEO plugin for your WordPress site? Did you set the site title and tagline in the General Settings of WordPress?
  21. Did you remember to set Permalinks to something other than the default settings?
  22. Have you generated an XML Sitemap for your site as well as a human sitemap (HTML sitemap)?
  23. Are you playing nice in the legal arena?  Items to verify on your WordPress site include: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright notice, Cookie Warnings for the EU, company details for tax and other anti-spam requirements and any licensing information (like fonts and images).
  24. Is there anything else you can do to speed up the site? You can use websites like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom and GTMetrix to quality the speed of your website as well as provide recommendations for how to improve the loading speed of the site.
  25. Once you have moved the site to the live server, make sure you have done tasks like relicensing any plugins (and/or themes), turn on the site’s caching plugin ability, set up your analytics tracking and activate any CDN or WordPress firewall system you will use for the site.
  26. Make sure all the security settings (iThemes’ Security Pro for example) are turned on so you can protect your site against WordPress brute force attacks, enforce strong passwords for WordPress password security and other recommended ways to lock down WordPress.
  27. You are almost done with the checklist. If you’ve made it this far, it’s time to make sure you have your automatic WordPress backup schedules set up.
  28. Launch the site!
At this point, if you are launching a site for a client you may find it necessary to schedule follow-up appointments with the client to make sure everything is running smoothly and the site meets/exceeds expectations. This follow-up appointment is also a great time to update your design portfolio and request a testimonial from the client.

Do you have other steps or items you check on with every WordPress site you launch? How do you celebrate your launch with your client? (or do you even celebrate a launch?) I’d love to hear how you prepare for a new WordPress site launch and if you use a launch checklist.

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