What to check before you launch a new website

Check that everything actually works

It sounds obvious, but most launch-day embarrassments are simple things nobody clicked. Set aside an hour and go through the site as a visitor would, not as the person who built it.

• Click every link in the menu, footer and body copy. Fix anything that leads to an error page or to a test address.
• Submit every form and confirm the message arrives at the right inbox, not just that a "thank you" appears. Check the spam folder too.
• Try the site on a phone, a tablet and a laptop, and in at least two browsers. Look for text that overflows, buttons that are hard to tap and images that are cut off.
• Replace all placeholder text and sample images. Search the site for "lorem", "test" and "TBC".
• Make sure there is a helpful 404 page, so a mistyped address leads somewhere useful.

Speed and images

Large, uncompressed photos are the most common reason a new site feels slow. Resize them to the size they are displayed at and compress them. Then load the home page on a mobile connection and see how long you wait before you can read something.

Make sure search engines can find you

A surprisingly common mistake is launching a site that is still telling search engines to stay away. Many site builders and developers switch on a "discourage search engines" setting or a noindex tag while the site is being built. Check it has been removed.

• Give every page its own title and a short description that reads like a sentence, not a list of keywords.
• Check your robots.txt file is not blocking the whole site, and that you have an XML sitemap to submit.
• Set up analytics so you can see what visitors do from the first day.
• Give images descriptive alt text. It helps search and it helps people using screen readers.

If you are replacing an old site

Make a list of the old addresses that people have bookmarked, linked to or found through search, and redirect each one to its closest equivalent on the new site. Without redirects, those visitors land on an error page and you lose the standing the old pages earned.

Cover the legal and trust basics

You do not need a lawyer to check the obvious things, though you may want one for the wording. For a UK site, the usual items are:

• A privacy policy that says what personal data you collect (including through forms and analytics) and what you do with it.
• A cookie notice and consent choice if you use non-essential cookies or tracking.
• Terms for anything you sell or any service you offer.
• Your business name and contact details, and any registration details that apply to your type of business, shown clearly.

While you are at it, do a basic accessibility pass. Can you reach every link and button with the keyboard alone? Is the text easy to read against its background? Do form fields have visible labels? These checks make the site better for everyone.

Lock down security before the doors open

A new site is a new target, and automated scanners will find it within days. A few steps close off most of the easy routes in.

• Serve the whole site over HTTPS and make sure the plain http:// address redirects to it.
• Update the content management system, themes and plugins to their latest versions, and remove any you are not using.
• Delete default or test accounts. Give every admin a strong, unique password and turn on two-step verification where it is offered.
• Add spam protection to your forms, so your inbox is not flooded the day you go live.
• Limit who has admin access to the people who genuinely need it.

Check you can get it back if it breaks

This is the item that gets skipped, because on launch day everything is working and nothing seems at risk. But a site can be lost to a bad update, a hosting failure, a deleted database, an accidental overwrite or ransomware. The question is not whether you have a backup somewhere, but whether you could restore from it today.

Take a full copy before you go live

Back up the files, the database and your configuration at the point where you know everything works. That gives you a known-good version to return to if the first week goes badly.

Keep copies off-site and encrypted

A backup stored on the same server as the site goes down with it. A copy on a USB drive in the office is only as safe as the office. The usual advice is to keep several copies, on different kinds of storage, with at least one held somewhere else entirely. Encrypt that copy, because a backup contains everything an attacker would want.

This is what we do at Backups. Our agent copies your servers and computers to an encrypted off-site vault every day without anyone having to remember. Data is encrypted with AES-256 before it leaves your machine, and you choose the encryption key, so only you can open it. If something does go wrong, you can go back to the last clean night.

Test a restore

Pick a file or a page, restore it somewhere safe, and confirm it opens. Do this once before launch and then again from time to time. A backup you have never restored is an assumption, not a plan.

Plan the launch day itself

If you are moving to a new address or host, lower the DNS "time to live" setting a day or two beforehand so the switch spreads quickly. Launch at a quiet time, not on a Friday evening when nobody is around to fix problems.

Straight afterwards, go through the key pages again on the live address, send a test through each form, and confirm analytics is recording visits. Check that your sitemap has been submitted and that nothing is still marked noindex.

Then keep watching for a week or two. Look at error reports, any drop in enquiries and any odd pages showing up in search results. Most launch problems are small and fixable if you see them early.