We can spend hundreds of hours designing and building a Drupal. But when launch time comes there's still plenty of work to be done. The Ultimate Drupal Launch Checklist covers launch from every angle, providing orderly steps to avoid post launch surprises. So when you tell the client their site is launched they'll be impressed.

1. THE
Ultimate
Drupal
Launch
Checklist

3. Before You Start
Existing Site?
●
Planned outage?
●
Schedule notification to users
●
Maintenance page (configure content, customize?, use rules)
Do you have everything you need?
●
Access to live environment
●
SSL Certificate
●
Access to DNS

4. Pre-Launch Check
1. Check the small stuff
●
Login/Reset New Password/Sign up
– Themed?
– Did you install nocurrent_pass?
●
Registration
– Check email notification text
– Change site email
●
Error Pages
– Redirect Access Denied to Login?
– Customize

5. Pre-Launch Check
2. Review Content and Cleanup
●
Remove test data
●
Check file security
●
Run link checker (e.g. validator.w3.org/checklink,
linkchecker module)
●
Content revisions?
●
Backups?

6. Pre-Launch Check
3. Test Site Admin Interface (should have been done in development)
●
Redirect to dashboard on login based on role (Rules)
●
Buttons to add content (did you theme standard markup?)

7. Pre-Launch Check
4. Cross Browser Testing (should be part of development)
●
First with Firefox Dev Tools “View responsive layouts”
●
Then with BrowserStack, Sauce Labs or Other
●
Did you plan for large screens? Should you?
●
Retina Support (Retina Image Module, svg, Borialis server)

8. Pre-Launch Check
5. SEO
●
Schema module
●
Automatic path configurations
●
Install XML Sitemap
●
Other tools
– SEO Tools
– Intelligence

9. Pre-Launch Check
6. Push content/code to live
●
Backup existing site
●
For upgrades – Migrate content D6 → D7
7. Check status report and logs
●
Latest release?
●
Fix what's causing log entries / switch to syslog server
●
Lots of modules available for improved logging
8. Disable devel modules

10. Pre-Launch Check
Other Testing Tools
●
Notifications
– Litmus – Test and track emails
●
Powermapper – Website tools

11. Pay it forward
What are your favorite web site testing tools?

12. Time to Launch
Never on a Friday (don't spoil your weekend)
9. Redirect to www via settings.php
10. Point DNS (Use TTL setting for faster update)
11. SSL Certificate + Secure pages or settings.php
Test, test, test

13. settings.php magic
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] == 'yoursite.com') {
header('HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com'. $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
exit();
}
if (!isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_SSL']) ||
(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_SSL']) && $_SERVER['HTTP_X_SSL'] != 'ON')) {
header('HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: https://www.yoursite.com'. $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
exit();
}

14. Time to Launch
12. Optimize performance settings
13. Logging and errors
●
Users should not see error display
●
admin/config/development/logging
14. Mail delivery
●
Server vs SMTP vs Mandrill / Sendgrid
●
reroute_mail module – Reroute all site mail based on
environment for testing

15. Post Launch
15. Setup daily backups
16. Tracking User Behaviors
Configure Google Analytics
OWA Module
17. SEO
Configure Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster Tools
Submit to search engines
SEO Checklist Module

16. The Ultimate SEO Checklist
next time ;-)
Google
Google Places
Google Mobile
Bing
Yahoo!
Twitter
Facebook
CitySearch
Foursquare
YP.comSM
GPS navigation
MerchantCircle

17. Post Launch
Brag!
Client
Will there be a press release (to who)?
Industry media?
Agency
Have you prepared?
Where?

18. Questions?
Daniel Schiavone
Daniel@SnakeHill.net
@schiavo
@snake_hill
DDO: schiavone
Baltimore Drupal Meetup
meetup.com/Baltimore-Drupal-Meetup
Baltimore / DC Drupal Drupal
Co-working