Going live with your website - Checklist
Before you go live with your website, there are a number of things you need to consider. In this article we explain what all this is and how you can easily fly through it. To have your website live within the hosting of MijnHostingPartner.nl!
Going live with a website can be quite exciting, often there is a lot of work behind it. And the question is whether the website will be well received. Unfortunately we can't help you with this directly, but we can give you a checklist you can use to make sure your website doesn't forget the typical last minute issues that can have a big impact on the success of your website. Let's get started!
Functional check for your website
A functional check for a website is nothing more than going through all the pages and sections at your leisure. Put a notepad on your desk next to your keyboard or open one on your PC. Open your website in your favorite browser, and then in a number of other browsers. Look at the design, whether everything is visible, clickable, and whether certain links and sections work.
Also, in addition to the superficial top, open the browser tools with F12 and see if any console errors come up. For example, a common error is that a MIME Type has yet to be added. Like an SVG image that can't be loaded yet. Or a 404 message that is still coming up. This is the place where you can easily see what is still going wrong. Write these things down, their location and make screenshots. You can incorporate this into a report for your website creators or add it to your own to do list to fix. Some issues will always come up in most cases. Depending on the complexity of your website of course.
Also check things like Favicon, logos and other essentials that should be visible on every website at all times.
URL structure
The URL structure is very important not only for search engine ranking but also for visitors. Make sure you use readable URLs that are easy to remember and tap into. And also decide how you prefer the URL structure to be. For example with a category in the URL. Or with a date in it. We recommend to keep it shorter than longer. Above a number of characters can have a negative effect. Always try to keep this in a logical way and not to lose the overview. For help with this you can use the knowledge base in the Mod rewrite category. There are many articles that can help you to get this done according to your wishes.
Images correctly loaded and not too large
A website without images or media looks bare. It is therefore important to include images on your website. Images that are not only original, but also relate to the content of that page or post. These can be product images for example, or just a general image that is there purely to make it look nicer.
All images on a website should use a smaller size, depending on the design. And should be put through a compression tool once. This ensures that an image does not take up unnecessary space. And also the website can be loaded faster on all devices. Especially mobile, this is very important since there is not always a fast connection available. Around and below 100KB is usually the main rule.
Mobile compatible, on different screen sizes
That mobile is important will not be news by now. The percentage of the population that does not own a computer or laptop at all is increasing. With a mobile phone everything is done, from shopping in a webshop, navigating to a destination and reading and searching for information. Although a large part also only uses Social Media. So make sure you test with mobile devices and that your website is suitable to use, not use a second URL specifically for mobile. And that on multiple screen sizes your website still looks decent.
HTTPS certificate and the redirect
HTTPS is another item that just has to work, whether you use a free SSL Certificate from Lets Encrypt, or a paid certificate. An HTTPS connection is important to have active for a large number of reasons. First, it shows trust to any browser. If you don't have an SSL certificate active on your website then users will get Not Safe at the top of the screen. Obviously not very conducive to the user experience.
Secondly, it is actually a protection for users because data that a user fills in is encrypted over the line. For example, in a public network, the form on your website cannot be read by others who are listening with WireShark. This is extremely important for web shops and other websites where data is collected.
Finally, this gives your website an advantage in search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. Such things as an SSL certificate are a simple yes-no question. Which can have a lot of impact on the performance of your website.
Redirect from an SSL certificate is to arrange for all traffic to your website to end up at one URL. We still recommend that you take the full URL. So https://www. Where all traffic ends up. Opinions are divided on this, so do your own research and use our knowledge base to set up the redirect.
DNS check, mail and availability around the world
DNS is the underlying technology that ensures that your website is available around the world. This can be very technical, but at MijnHostingPartner.nl we have a number of things automatically set for you. With our default settings, no further action is required. As soon as you create a Mail account on your domain, things like DKIM, DMARC and SPF are immediately set up for you in the background. This not only ensures that you have less chance of SPAM, but also that your email is seen as safer by a second and even third signatory. This way you have almost no chance that emails you send to others end up in the SPAM.
Furthermore, we have a global DNS solution that ensures that your website resolves quickly everywhere, which benefits the reachability and speed of the website.
Make sure the email addresses are created and set on your mobile phone, so you can answer any questions and mails quickly. The default email address that is created for websites is info@. Of course you can also personalize this, here you are free to do so.
Functional speed check
The speed of any website is very important, because this makes the difference between a pleasant user experience. And a bad one. This can have an impact on everything, on your number of users per day, bounce rate, conversions and you name it. So the speed is very important to test yourself on multiple devices and connections. And to run it externally through a number of tests. You do this with Pingdom, Google pagespeeds and GTMetrix. The target speed is always under three seconds. With often the main goal to show everything within 1 second. However, as soon as you start adding ads or extensive statistics tools. Then you also make the website slower. So be aware of this and make sure you take it into account.
SMTP Authentication on the site
SMTP authentication is required to send mail from your website, so make sure you take this into account. And where necessary, set it up in your code, or install a plug-in. This way we can prevent a lot of abuse, which ensures that your mail addresses have a small chance of ending up on a blacklist. This is a non-negotiable item, and can be done on your website in a matter of minutes. Check out our knowledge base on this as well, we have a lot of articles dedicated to making it as simple as possible to switch to secure messaging.
Backup Backup Backup
We repeat it again, also in this blog post, it is extremely important that you set up a backup for your website. An automatic backup via a scheduled task will save you a lot of worry, because an accident can happen at any time. And you are ultimately responsible for this. Put it in your calendar to check and clean the backup once a month. We recommend a weekly backup for most websites. This can also be a daily backup. Just make sure that the backups do not grow exponentially and that your hosting space does not get filled up because of this. Preferably save the backup in your hosting space, on your local computer or drive and on a service like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive. We also have an alternative for this at MijnBackupPartner.nl. For a competitive price you already have backup locations around the world.
Statistics tool active, and exclude your IP
To keep track of the visitors of your fresh website, you need to install a statistics tool in the header of your website. And you have a choice between a number of different tools. For both beginners and experienced users there are two tools that we recommend. Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics. These two tools give you pretty much all the information you would want to have access to. And can be used to track and optimize your website. Do not forget to exclude your own IP address from your results. Otherwise you have a big chance that your statistics are polluted by your own hits. With a small rule you can always filter this out and make sure you do not see false results. Which can be demotivating.
Aftercare after going live
After your website goes live you need to put a few things in the agenda. Who is responsible for the content of your website, in the form of blog posts, Social Media posts and further content. Who will make sure the website stays up to date and live. And who is responsible for the interaction with customers and visitors. It is often good to have such matters clearly on paper. And to take this, for example, in a weekly meeting. So you can motivate and encourage each other to make your website a success. A website is an investment of time and money, and should therefore also deliver something. With a simple business card website you often fail in the ever-growing online competition.
Motivate your team to do something together on your website, and get those new visitors, that weekly post on your website and get in touch with customers. This is what it takes to make your business website, portfolio for freelance work or blog website a success!
