Website Launch Checklist

Before launch day, the site must pass seven checks on staging: a phone-width layout, a tested contact form, working 301 redirects, no noindex tag or staging password, a backup restored once, SSL on both hostnames, and DNS TTL already lowered. Lowering the TTL to 300 seconds a day early is the one preparation most teams skip — it turns a rollback from a waiting game into a five-minute fix.

• Mobile layout: menu, form and gallery work on a phone over mobile data, not only on office Wi-Fi.
• Contact form: a test message arrives in a mailbox someone opens, with a usable reply-to.
• Old URLs: every promised old path returns exactly one 301 to its replacement — test each with a redirect checker.
• noindex and staging password: gone from the page source and the response headers.
• Backup: files and database captured, and restored once on a staging copy. A backup never restored is a file, not a plan.
• SSL: the padlock shows on both www and non-www; the www choice itself is explained in www versus non-www.
• DNS TTL: dropped to 300 seconds at least a day before the switch.

Certificate problems caught here are cheap; the same problems on launch evening are not. If SSL misbehaves on staging, the SSL not-working guide walks the usual causes before they become public.

In the first week, four signals tell you the launch held: the 404 log, uptime alerts, form mail arriving, and real traffic in analytics. Search Console's coverage and security reports settle within days rather than hours, so read them once at the end of the week instead of refreshing them hourly.

• 404 log: no inbound link should land on a missing page — every one is a redirect you forgot.
• Uptime: the monitor should show no downtime alert since the switch.
• Form mail: real enquiries reach the inbox, not just your test message.
• Indexing: the homepage and key pages move from Discovered to Indexed; the security report stays empty.

After the first week the work turns into routine upkeep — updates, backups, content — whose INR budget is covered in website maintenance cost in India. The recurring hardening list for WordPress specifically sits in the WordPress security checklist.

The expensive launch mistakes are the ones that burn money or index the wrong page: promoting before DNS settles, cancelling the old host too early, and leaving a staging copy indexable. Each is a five-minute check that becomes a week of cleanup when skipped.

• Promoting on launch evening: ads and email go out while some resolvers still show the old host or nothing.
• www left unredirected: both hostnames resolve, so ranking signals and analytics split in two.
• Forms to an unread mailbox: the form works, the enquiry dies in an inbox nobody opens.
• Old host cancelled on day one: resolvers holding the old record for up to 48 hours serve errors.
• Indexed staging hostname: the staging copy competes with the real launch page until it is deindexed.

If the build itself is still on paper, website design services is the commercial page, and the boundary between this content product and a logged-in tool is drawn in website versus web application. For a handover to an agency, ask for this checklist completed — with evidence — as part of the delivery.