I’ve launched so many websites, blogs, content channels and web applications that I’ve completely lost count of them all. I’m real good at launching websites, real good.

Until I do it without a checklist.

If you’re working on one project at a time with NOTHING else going on, maybe, just maybe you can do it without a checklist, but once you forget your reporting tags, or you forget to configure the All in One SEO Kit, or you don’t map image paths, well, you get the idea. It’s easy to screw yourself.

Here’s my main launch checklist from my most recent major project. Detailed and thorough, but I still left some things out. This checklist comes after product specs and approval, so I won’t include all that.

I’m the only person working directly on this project, so I can maintain the pre-launch checklist in TextPad. If I had a team I’d publish the checklist to a project management app like @Task, or to Google Docs or our wiki.

• DONE Get new design sliced into widgetized WordPress theme
• DONE Justify/get approval/funding for new hosting account for migrating all blogs to WordPress
• DONE Create new hosting account with high availability servers
• DONE Find load testing partner
• DONE Create dev site on new HA servers for load testing
• DONE Load test new HA servers
• DONE Approve new HA servers
• DONE Migrate sites on existing prod account to new HA
• DONE Determine how to remove spam comments from migrating site database
• DONE Get database of migrating site
• DONE Get complete file/directory structure of migrating site
• DONE Review standard and specialized WordPress plugins for migrating site
• DONE Create dev site for migrating site on dev vps
• DONE upload images and media files in existing complete file/directory structure of migrating site
• DONE Import Movable Type database into dev database
• DONE/ONGOING Remove spam comments from database
• DONE Determine how to map URLs from old Movable Type site to new WordPress site
• DONE Export Movable Type content
• DONE Import content into WordPress
• DONE Map URLs in HTACCESS or Redirection, do not use OPS resources
• DONE fix 404 page and use Smart 404 plugin, plus a 404 notifier plugin
• DONE Get new ad tags
• DONE create contact page for submitting tips using wp-spamfree contact form, add to header.php navigation
• DONE import 16.txt and 17.txt. import site content and pull the images too
• DONE create database and site on new HA servers
• DONE determine new IP address and communicate DNS change requirements and schedule to OPS
• DONE load test
• DONE wordpress optimization (php, mysql) >>>> libphp5, other after load testing – n/a, I’m happy.
• DONE map list of file permissions
• DONE review plugins to ensure that all are there or deleted
• DONE change searchform.php in the theme to point to the correct url
• DONE load ad tags
• DONE team site review and QA
• DONE add reporting tags
• Create prelaunchSEO Reports
• Create intensedebate account, migrate comments to intensedebate
• Test remove the digg-retweet div
• add the next page/previous page links to single.php
• Make DNS switch to new hosting/HA account
• Enable IntenseDebate after migration completes

That’s my checklist for one specific product launch. There are a bunch of standard items and a few unique to this project. I hope that you can copy and use this list in your upcoming launches. And let me know if you think I missed anything, I’m always into learning new things.

charlie

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