WordCamp Tampa – 30 Things You Must Do Before Launch by Drew Barton

Drew Barton
https://twitter.com/drewbarton
http://southernweb.com/

1. Have a checklist
2. Limit your admin users – Give them Editor access instead
3. Give editor access to menus – Install Editor Theme Options
4. No default permalinks
5. Remove “Hello World!” content from the blog
6. Unblock search engines
7. Install YOAST for SEO
8. Unique Title tags for each page
9. Install video user manuals for WordPress
10. Remove test links – Turn off your dev server
11. Install Google Tag Manager
12. Setup Google Analytics – Add user accounts for client – Setup automatic monthly reporting
13. Setup Google Webmaster Tools – Check for 404 Errors
14. Create 301 Redirects if rebuilding a site
15. Style your 404 page – Give the users something to do so they aren’t at a dead end
16. ???
17. Check for JavaScript Errors in Console
18. Test for responsiveness
19. Consistent fonts & styles
20. Page Load Limit – Use Pingdom Website Speed Test or http://nibbler.silktide.com/
21. Set plugin number limit
22. Confirm email addresses exists – send a test email
23. Confirm contact form works
24. Create form success pages – Tell them what is going to happen next – Put conversion tracking on the page
25. Obfuscate email addresses
26. Setup Google Webmaster Tools – Ensure you link it to the Google Analytics account
27. Submit XML Sitemap
28. Create backups – “Jesus saves.  Buddha does incremental backups”. – Setup backups outside your web host – Even physically mail a copy of the website to the client
29. Check for gremlins – text artifacts – copy/paste issue from MS Word
30. Remove development plugins – WordPress Move – WP Migrate DB Pro – etc
31. Install caching

Make sure you deliver that “last mile” to the client.