Pre-Launch Checklist: 23 Things to Do Before Launching a Website
Before you launch your website, you should have it live on a staging site. This will allow you to make edits and play around with formats to ensure everything is perfect before you push it live.
In our website planning checklist below, we cover 23 tasks we recommend tackling pre-launch.
Let’s dig in.
1. Make Sure Your SSL Certificate Works (HTTPS)
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates validate your website’s identity and enable you to use HTTPS for secure data transfer. It’s essential for eCommerce sites in particular, although there’s really no excuse for skipping this step regardless of your niche, particularly since you can generate an SSL certificate for free. If you do not confirm your SSL works, your website may be labeled as ‘not secure.’
Many good web hosts will take care of setting up an SSL certificate for you. If not, you can use a service such as Let’s Encrypt to generate a free certificate and set it up manually.
However, keep in mind that some websites require different types of certificates, in which case, you might need to purchase one. In either case, you’ll want to get your certificate up from the get-go.
Enabling HTTPS Traffic
Once your SSL certificate is in place, you can re-route all your website’s traffic through HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). As such, you ensure the security of all the data going back and forth from your site. Plus, most browsers will display whether your site is HTTPS enabled:
If you don’t configure your website to use HTTPS, visitors will get a warning when they try to access it, which is terrible for business and your traffic levels:
To avoid this big, problematic warning, we recommend following Google’s guidelines for enabling HTTPS. If you’re a WordPress user, we also wrote a guide on how to move your site to HTTPS, which you’ll want to take a look at.
2. Update Your Content Management System (CMS) to the Latest Version
Using a CMS can simplify your life in a lot of ways. This type of software usually provides you with a broad range of tools to create, update, and manage your pages and blog posts, even if you don’t have web development knowledge.
However, much like other software, you’ll need to update your CMS to ensure it remains stable and provides you with its latest features. For a real-world example, see WordPress. This CMS rolls out updates frequently and includes new features every few months.
Before you launch your website, you want to double-check that you’re using the latest version of your CMS and whether it works well with your site. This will practically ensure you won’t run into any nasty surprises on launch day and beyond.
Most CMSs will let you know when you need to update the software, so staying up-to-date with the latest releases shouldn’t be an issue. Even after your website goes live, we recommend you always update your CMS whenever a new version goes live, so keep an eye out for notices.
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