The website launch checklist, including the bit everyone forgets

Before launch: content and function

The unexciting half. Nearly every item here has cost a real business real enquiries at some point.

• Every page proofread by somebody who did not write it. The author cannot see their own typos. This is not a personal failing, it is how reading works.
• Every contact detail verified by using it. Phone the number. Email the address. Do not read them, use them. A digit wrong in a phone number is a website that silently costs you every call.
• Every form submitted, on a real device. Confirm where the message lands and that somebody actually reads that inbox. Test the failure case too: what happens when a required field is empty?
• Every link clicked. Including the footer, which nobody ever checks, and any links to third party services.
• The site tested on real phones. Not a narrow browser window. A real phone, and ideally two, on mobile data.
• Images sized sanely. A photo straight from a camera is enormous. Ship them like that and the site is slow from day one for reasons nobody will diagnose later. See speed optimization.
• Every page has a unique title and description. Duplicated ones are the default output of a lot of tools, and they waste the one line of the site you get to write in the search results.
• A real 404 page exists. With navigation on it. Somebody will land there and they should not be stranded.

Before launch: the link preview / share card

Its own section because it is skipped on nearly every launch, and because it cannot be fixed retroactively for everyone who already saw the blank version. Full detail: missing link preview image.

• An og:image exists on every page. This is the picture that appears when the link is shared. Without it, your site is a grey box in every message and every post. We treat this as a launch requirement rather than polish, because the first thing that happens to a new site is somebody shares it.
• The image URL is absolute, not relative. It must be a full address starting with the protocol and domain. A relative path works in your browser and fails in every scraper that reads it. This is the single most common reason a preview is blank.
• The image is roughly 1200 by 630 pixels. That is the shape the major platforms crop to. Feed them something square or tiny and it gets cropped strangely or rejected outright.
• og:title and og:description are set and readable. The card is a headline plus a line of text. If they are missing, platforms guess from the page, and the guess is usually your navigation menu.
• The Twitter card tag is present. Some platforms read their own tags and ignore the Open Graph ones. Set both; it costs nothing.
• Re-scrape the page on each platform after launch. This is the step people miss. Platforms cache the preview the first time anyone shares a URL, including the broken version from before you fixed it. Use each platform's own debugging or sharing tool to force a fresh fetch, otherwise your fix is invisible to everyone who already shared it.
• Share it into a real chat and look. The final check, and the only one that proves it. Paste the link into a message to yourself and see the card render. If it looks right there, it is right.

Before launch: the technical foundations

The invisible layer. Everything here is undetectable by looking at the site, which is precisely why it survives to launch day.

• The noindex tag is removed. Staging sites are blocked from search on purpose. Leave that block on at launch and your new site is invisible while everybody congratulates each other. This is a genuine classic and it happens to good teams.
• The robots file allows crawling. Same failure, different file. Check it explicitly rather than assuming.
• Redirects mapped from every old URL. On a rebuild, this is the item that decides whether you keep your rankings or start again. Every old address that had traffic or links needs to point at its new equivalent. Not all at the homepage: that is not a redirect strategy, it is a shrug.
• Canonical URLs are correct. Pointing at the live domain, not the staging one. A canonical left pointing at a preview address tells search engines your real site is a copy.
• A sitemap exists and lists only real, indexable pages. No redirects, no noindex pages, no preview URLs.
• The certificate is valid on every version of the domain. With and without the www, and any other name that resolves. A warning on one variant is a warning to whoever landed on it.
• One version of the domain is the real one. The others redirect to it. Otherwise you have several copies of the same site competing with each other.
• Analytics and Search Console are connected and verified. Before launch, not after, so day one is measured. See analytics setup and Search Console.
• A backup of the old site exists, off the server. Somewhere you can reach it if the new one has to come down. Take it before anything changes.

Launch day

A short window that goes smoothly if the list above was done, and badly if it was not.

• Launch in the morning, early in the week. Never a Friday afternoon. You want the people who can fix things awake and reachable.
• Make the DNS change and wait properly. Propagation is not instant. During the window some visitors see the old site and some see the new one. Do not panic at the first inconsistent report.
• Check the live domain, not your cache. Fresh browser, phone on mobile data. Your machine has been looking at this site for weeks and is the worst possible judge.
• Submit the forms again, on the live domain. Different domain, different mail path, different result. Forms that worked on the preview fail here regularly.
• Spot check the redirects. Take the old URLs that mattered and load each one. They should land on the right page, not the homepage and not a 404.
• Confirm the certificate on the live domain. Freshly issued certificates occasionally need a moment. Look for the warning, do not assume.
• Share the link and look at the card. Right now, while you can still fix it before anyone else shares it.
• Submit the sitemap in Search Console. It nudges the re-crawl. It does not make anything rank, and anyone who says otherwise is overselling a free button.

The days and weeks after

A site is not finished when it launches. It is public. The first month is where you learn what the plan got wrong.

• Watch Search Console for coverage errors. The first crawl of a new site turns things up. Several of the reports look alarming and are not problems: see what the errors actually mean.
• Expect a wobble, and do not panic at it. On a rebuild, traffic often moves around while search engines re-crawl and re-evaluate. Judge it over weeks, not days. Reversing course after 48 hours is how a fine launch becomes a mess.
• Confirm enquiries are actually arriving. Not that the form works. That real messages from real people are landing and being answered. Silence after launch is more often a broken pipe than a lack of demand.
• Watch for 404s in the logs. These are the old URLs you did not know about. Each one is a redirect you still owe somebody.
• Fix what real visitors trip over. They will find things no amount of testing found. That is not a failure of the testing, it is what real use does.
• Update your Google Business Profile and listings. If URLs changed, the links pointing at them changed too. The local SEO checklist covers the rest.
• Start the maintenance routine. Launch is where upkeep begins, not where the work ends. The maintenance checklist is the ongoing version of this page.

Why launch deserves its own time in the schedule

Launch is treated as a moment and it is actually a stage. It gets no time in the plan because it does not look like work, and then it is done at the end of a long project by people who want to be finished. That combination is how the noindex tag stays on.

Book it. A morning, early in the week, with the list in front of you and somebody available to fix what surfaces. The cost of doing that is a few hours. The cost of not doing it is a site that is live and invisible, or live and silently swallowing every enquiry, and neither announces itself.

This is also why we treat the share card as a launch requirement rather than a nice extra. Launch is the one day your link gets shared more than any other, and it is the one day the preview being blank is seen by the most people.