Pre‑live website checklist

You may do amazing website design, great coding, but if you skip this pre-launch check-list – you don’t look professional anymore, you look amateur.

To prevent this I’ve created this step-by-step guide that I use in every single agency website delivery process. 

When everything seems ready, right before launch me and my team does a final check using this checklist.

Key points:

1. Read the full checklist and see if it’s covering all your need
2. Adjust it to your needs
3. Update it once a month/quarter

This list is created to make sure everything works as expected and even if you feel your developers have checked everything – run the checklist every time. Bugs won’t slip through and you won’t look amateur anymore thinking 

“Damn, we should have covered this”

Cheklist groups critical tasks into thematic clusters so you don’t overlook any details that could affect security, performance or user trust.

Backups

1. Do the backup of production before any launches
2. Do the backup of the staging before any launches

Core Setup

1. WordPress is up to date ( v 6x)
2. PHP is up to date (v 8.3)
3. Plugins are up to date
4. 404 page exist

User Experience & Forms

1. Forms working

1.1 Submit each form and ensure messages are sent; 

1.2 Confirm all emails are getting notification about new submissions.

1.3 Auto‑reply messages are accurate and spam filters or CAPTCHAs don’t block legitimate users

1.4 Connect SMTP to ensure better deliverability of emails.

1.5 Do not forget SPF, DKIM, DMARC records for the domain.

1.6 All form submissions are stored –  use your form plugin’s entries database or integrate with a CRM to capture every submission for analysis

1.7 Antispam protection (reCAPTCHA or Honeypot) enabled

2. Favicon and site identity configured
3. Social Previews are tested – make sure that tab icons and social share previews display correctly; 
4. All links are working properly: no # links, no broken links (run SEO tool like semrush for audit )
5. Make a final test on iphone/android as a user. Not emulator, but as real user navigating through website and check each template
6. External links like social links are linked and opens in new tab
7. Remove all dummy content (test pages and posts + Hello World)

Performance & Optimisation

1. Images are using correct thumbnails. No original images are used, unless it’s something worthy
2. Images are compressed
3. Lazy-load enabled for images/videos/iframes
4. First screen images are excluded from lazy-load
5. First screen images are preloaded
6. Images are using correct file format
7. Images are converted to WEBP, AVIF format
8. JS deliverability with defer and async options
9. CSS is minified
10. External CDN is not used to connect any CSS, JS  files to the website
11. Cache is configured
12. No CLS issues
13. Theme is double-checked to strip out unused assets
14. CDN is connected and tested
15. Monitoring tools connected (uptime & error tracking)

Security & Protection

1. SSL installed and enforced

Antispam protection (reCAPTCHA or Honeypot)

2. 2FA auth installed

3. Base Security Protection with Solid Security plugin ☐ 

Debug logs off & staging plugins removed 

4. Test users removed or restricted with unsecure passwords

5 .Remove unused themes

Analytics & other marketing integration

1. Google Analytics is  connected/migrated
2. GTM is connected/migrated
3. Search Console set up — Create and verify your site in Google Search Console to monitor search performance, indexing and errors.
4. Redirects configured (old to new URLs) — Build a redirect map and implement 301 redirects to send users and search engines from old pages to their new locations; failing to set up redirects can tank your search rankings.
5. All old pages have same URLs or redirects — Ensure old pages are accessible via the same URLs or by 301 redirects to their new counterparts to preserve your search equity
6. All premium plugins are having active and valid production keys
7. All API keys are changed to production keys

Legal & Compliance

1. Add a Privacy Policy
2. Add a Disclaimer – Include a disclaimer that clarifies any advice, content accuracy or liability limitations to reduce legal exposure
3. Add Terms & Conditions — Terms & Conditions outline the rules of using your site, limit liability, and satisfy regulatory requirements

Bonus

1. Disable checkbox “Do not index this site”
2. New CPT, if they do not have single page, should be redirected to archive page

In our workflow – this checklist is  added to Asana, so I highly recommend to plug it into your task management tool to be sure it’s been used on every project.

I hope you found this helpful guide.

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