Preparing a site for go-live

Preparing a site for go-live

Before launch, it’s important to review all of the content on the website. We have listed a few points to test the site before launch.

  • Cross-check the site in for performance testing. E.g. webpagetest.org Share the report with the developer.
  • Contact Form if present – Make sure form settings have client’s mail id and submission will be sent to the clients email
  • Menubar – all the links should navigate to the live site and not our demo/info site.
  • Social networking – all the links should navigate to the client’s ID and should open in a new tab.
  • WP Admin username and password – It should not contain any references to “rtcamp”
  • Make sure that settings under reading are done properly.
  • Ensure that settings under “Media” are done properly.
  • Do Search and Replace (plugin) after uploading the database from the test server to live server
  • Ensure that the admin’s email is the client’s email address and not the personal/company email address.
  • Once the site goes live, make it visible to the search engine, and if it presents the test content then don’t do it.
  • Styling for default WordPress widgets.
  • Check robots.txt on your theme and make sure wp-admin and wp-includes are blocked on client-server.
  • Change the host file with the IP and the domain name to verify the website.
  • Once the site goes live, do the sanity testing to cross check that everything works as expected.

Adding Host File before performing Go Live Checklist

The /etc/hosts file contains a mapping of IP addresses to URLs. Your browser uses entries in the /etc/hosts file to override the IP-address-to-URL mapping returned by a DNS server. This is useful for testing DNS (domain name system) changes and the SSL configuration before making a website live.

Note: We use this method for performing internal sites/servers go live checklists.

Note: The /etc/hosts file affects only the local computer.

To open the editor use the following command.

sudo vim /etc/hosts

Once the editor is open add the IP provided and save it.

If you are using linux system follow this link as a reference on how to open and add host entry.

For Mac and Windows systems refer to this link.