🚀 HSC Site Launch Checklist 🚀

A simple hitlist to make sure launch day goes smoothly. Good luck!

Housekeeping 🏚

• Client user accounts have been set up.
• Timezone is set correctly.
• SSL Certificate has been set up.
• Favicon is showing.
• 404 Page is set up.
• Logo links back to the homepage.
• There are no broken links - Integrity - App
• Any required analytics tracking is in place.

Humans 😎

• Somebody new has read through the site's copy.
• Spelling has been checked.
• There is a constant visual style for buttons, links and UI elements.
• Contact Details are correct and working.
• A privacy policy in place if cookies are used or data is processed.
• Website is loading on all current desktop browsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge) unless otherwise agreed with the client. - https://browserstack.com
• Design files have been compared to staging site for accuracy.

SEO 🤖

• Robots.txt is set to prevent crawling on staging, allow on live site.
• A sitemap has been set up.
• 301 Redirects are in place.
• URL Structure is consistent.

Assets: 🖼

• Images use srcset with appropriate sizes.
• Images and Iframes are lazyloaded - https://github.com/aFarkas/lazysizes.
• Images are served efficiently - Cloudinary/Imager
• Images are served through a CDN if possible.
• Images have alt tags.
• A websafe font has been matched to help reduce FLOUT - https://meowni.ca/font-style-matcher/
• Comments are removed for production

Deployment: 📦

• Develop and Master branches have auto-deploy hooks to staging and live.
• Build for production runs on deploy
• There is 48 hours before launch if DNS changes are required (consider dropping TTL)

Performance: ️⚡

• Site has been tested with GTMetrix and Lighthouse.
• Site has been tested on fast 3g conditions.
• Scripts and stylesheets are minified as part of the build process
• Critical styles are extracted and inlined. https://github.com/filamentgroup/loadCSS

Access 🤘

• Content has a logical tabindex.
• A ‘Skip to main content’ link is in place.
• There is sufficient contrast between background and foreground colours/
• Focus styles have been tested.
• Site has been tested without a mouse.

If you only check one thing 🔥

• I'm not launching on a Friday.

Also check these:

https://frontendchecklist.io/
https://github.com/drublic/checklist https://boxhead.io/launch-checklist/