Launching a new WordPress website is an exciting milestone, whether it‘s a personal blog, business site, or eCommerce store. But in the rush to get your site live as soon as possible, it‘s easy to overlook critical steps in the process. Skipping key pre-launch tasks can lead to performance issues, security vulnerabilities, lost conversions, and unhappy visitors.
To help make your WordPress site launch as smooth and successful as possible, we‘ve put together this comprehensive pre-launch checklist. It covers everything from technical fundamentals to content preparation to performance optimization. Going through this list methodically before taking your site live will give you peace of mind that you haven‘t missed anything important.
Of course, every website is unique, and you may have some special considerations not covered here. Use this as a starting point and add on any extra items that are relevant to your specific site. Treat launching your site with the care and attention it deserves, and you‘ll be setting yourself up for online success.
1. Choose the Right Hosting Plan
The foundation of any successful WordPress website is quality hosting. Choosing the right type of hosting and plan for your needs has a major impact on your site‘s performance, security, scalability and more.
For most websites, we recommend going with a reputable managed WordPress hosting provider. With managed hosting, the technical aspects of running a WordPress site are taken care of for you – things like performance optimization, security, daily backups, and core updates. This frees you up to focus on creating content and growing your site without worrying about the technical details.
The level of managed hosting your site requires depends on your budget and projected traffic levels. Entry-level plans are fine for small blogs and business sites, while high-traffic and eCommerce sites will need the extra resources of premium hosting plans.
Whichever route you choose, make sure to do your research, read reviews, and select a host with a proven track record and reputation within the WordPress community. Choosing your hosting provider is not a decision to take lightly.
2. Install an Automated Backup Solution
Once your WordPress site is set up, one of the first things you should do is implement an automated backup system. Think of backups as an insurance policy for your website. Should anything go wrong – whether that‘s a failed update, compatibility issue, or malicious attack – you‘ll be able to quickly restore your site to a working state.
While some hosting providers include automated backups as part of their plans, it‘s best not to solely rely on this. For extra peace of mind, set up an independent backup solution as well. There are many quality WordPress backup plugins available that will automatically back up your entire site on a schedule you choose and store the backup files securely offsite.
We recommend going with a backup plugin that integrates with cloud storage services like Amazon S3, Google Drive, or Dropbox. This way, you‘ll always have access to your backups even if your hosting account gets suspended or compromised.
Remember, backing up your site regularly doesn‘t help if you never test your backups. Make a point to periodically restore your site from a backup to ensure the process works smoothly and your backup files aren‘t corrupted. Finding out your backups are broken when you actually need them is a nightmare situation you want to avoid.
3. Lock Down the WordPress Admin Area
As the most popular content management system powering over 40% of websites, WordPress is an attractive target for hackers. One of the most common types of attacks is a brute force attempt to gain access to the WordPress admin dashboard by guessing the login credentials.
Before launching your site, it‘s crucial to put some security measures in place to protect the admin area from unauthorized access. Some best practices include:
- Using strong passwords and requiring the same of all user accounts
- Enabling two-factor authentication for an extra layer of protection
- Limiting login attempts to lock out malicious actors
- Hiding the WordPress login page from its default location
- Implementing a firewall security solution like Sucuri or Wordfence
While no site is 100% hack-proof, following WordPress security best practices from day one will go a long way towards reducing risk. Many successful sites run for years without security incidents simply by covering the fundamentals.
As a site owner, it‘s also important to keep yourself educated on the ever-changing security landscape and emerging threats. Staying on top of WordPress security news will help you take proactive steps to keep your site safe.
4. Check for Broken Links and 404 Errors
Broken links leading to 404 error pages are not only a bad look for your newly launched site, but can also hurt your SEO and lose potential conversions. Before going live, thoroughly check your site for any broken links or missing pages.
For a small site, you can do this manually by clicking through your pages and testing all links. On larger sites, you‘ll want to use an automated link checking tool to crawl your site and identify any problems. There are many free and premium WordPress broken link checker plugins that can handle this for you.
In addition to internal links, don‘t forget to also test any outgoing links to external websites. While you can‘t control if another site removes or changes the link target, you can make sure the link is valid at the time of your site launch.
If you‘ve already added your site to Google Search Console, you can also use the Coverage report to identify any indexing issues like 404 errors. This is a good way to double check your work after running an automated link checker.
5. Test Your Site‘s Responsiveness on All Devices
Mobile traffic has officially surpassed desktop traffic, and Google now uses mobile-first indexing when ranking search results. This means having a mobile-friendly, responsive WordPress site is more important than ever.
Before launching, thoroughly test how your site looks and performs on a variety of screen sizes and devices. Open up your site on a desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone and go through the following checks:
- Is the layout optimized for each screen size without any content overlapping?
- Are the font sizes easily readable on smaller screens?
- Does the navigation menu adapt to touch screens?
- Do images, videos and other media fit within the screen constraints?
- Are there any noticeable changes in load time on slower mobile networks?
You can also use Google‘s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to get feedback on your site‘s mobile friendliness and see how Googlebot views your pages.
While most modern WordPress themes are responsive out of the box, it‘s still important to test thoroughly and make adjustments where needed. Delivering a first-class experience to mobile visitors is no longer optional in today‘s web landscape.
6. Configure Caching and a CDN
Website speed has a major impact on the user experience, search rankings, and conversion rates. Faster sites keep visitors happy, engaged and coming back for more. On the flip side, slow loading pages frustrate users and cause them to bounce.
Two of the most effective ways to improve WordPress site speed and performance are caching and using a content delivery network (CDN).
Caching creates static versions of your content and stores them on the server or in the visitor‘s browser. This eliminates the need for WordPress to dynamically generate the page on each visit and can significantly reduce page load times.
There are many free and premium WordPress caching plugins available to choose from depending on your needs. If your hosting plan includes server-side caching, make sure your plugin settings aren‘t in conflict with your host‘s caching system.
A CDN takes your site‘s static content (images, CSS, JavaScript files, etc.) and distributes it across a network of global servers. When a visitor requests a page, the content is served from the CDN server closest to their geographic location. This reduces the physical distance the data has to travel and speeds up content delivery.
Many managed WordPress hosts include a CDN as part of their plans. Alternatively, you can use a third-party CDN provider like Cloudflare or StackPath. Once set up, a CDN is an easy win for better site performance.
7. Optimize Your Images and Media Files
Images, videos and other media elements make your content more engaging and memorable. But if not properly optimized, they can also slow your site down to a crawl.
Before uploading any images to WordPress, make sure to optimize them for the web. This means:
- Scaling the image dimensions to fit within your content area (no need for 5000px wide images!)
- Compressing the image file size as much as possible without losing too much quality
- Choosing the right file format (JPEG for photographs, PNG for graphics, etc.)
- Using responsive images to serve different sizes based on screen size
There are many free image optimization tools and WordPress plugins that can automate parts of this process for you.
For videos, we recommend hosting them on a third-party service like YouTube or Vimeo and embedding them into your pages. This offloads the bandwidth and storage requirements from your hosting account. It also ensures better playback compatibility across devices since these services automatically create multiple video file versions.
8. Install an SEO Plugin and Submit Your Sitemap
WordPress is pretty SEO-friendly out of the box, but there‘s still a lot you can do to optimize your site and content to rank higher in the search results. This process starts before your site even goes live.
First, you‘ll want to install a WordPress SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO. These plugins give you a suite of tools to optimize your site structure and individual pieces of content. They also generate XML sitemaps which help search engine bots discover and index your pages.
Once you have an SEO plugin configured, submit your XML sitemap URL to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This proactively lets the search engines know your site is ready to be crawled. Depending on your site‘s size and complexity, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for your content to start being indexed and ranked.
9. Set Up Google Analytics Tracking
As the saying goes, "If you can‘t measure it, you can‘t improve it." Installing web analytics software on your WordPress site from day one is key to understanding how people find and interact with your content.
Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics platform, and it‘s free to use. With the tracking code installed on your site, you‘ll get detailed insights into your traffic sources, visitor behavior, content performance and more.
This data is invaluable for shaping your content strategy, SEO efforts, and conversion optimization. Without analytics, you‘re flying blind and making decisions based on guesswork.
There are several ways to add Google Analytics to WordPress, from inserting the tracking code directly into your theme files to using a plugin. We recommend going the plugin route as it‘s the simplest method and ensures the tracking code isn‘t tied to a specific theme.
MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. The free version covers everything most sites will need, while the Pro version offers more advanced tracking features like eCommerce reporting and individual post/page insights.
10. Plan for Post-Launch Maintenance and Growth
Launching your WordPress site is a big milestone, but it‘s really just the beginning. To ensure the long-term success and security of your site, you need to have a plan for ongoing maintenance and growth.
Some key maintenance tasks to stay on top of include:
- Keeping WordPress core, themes and plugins updated to the latest versions
- Monitoring your site‘s uptime and performance
- Regularly backing up your WordPress database and files
- Staying vigilant about WordPress security issues and vulnerabilities
- Moderating blog comments and deleting spam
- Fixing broken links and 404 errors as they crop up
In terms of growth, launching your site is when the real work of content creation and promotion begins. To keep your site moving in the right direction, you should:
- Stick to a consistent content publishing schedule
- Promote your content through social media, email, and other channels
- Engage with your readers and build a community around your brand
- Implement a conversion optimization strategy to turn visitors into leads/customers
- Stay on top of WordPress, SEO and digital marketing trends and best practices
Having a documented post-launch game plan will keep you accountable and ensure you‘re making steady progress with your site.
11. Don‘t Forget About the Legal Basics
Finally, before you launch your WordPress site, make sure you have the necessary legal pages and documentation in place. This includes:
- Privacy policy outlining what personal data you collect and how it‘s used
- Terms and conditions governing the use of your site and its content
- Cookie notice informing visitors of any tracking cookies and getting consent
- GDPR compliance measures for sites collecting data from EU residents
- Proper disclosure for affiliate links and sponsored content
While not the most exciting part of launching a website, having these legal basics covered is important for protecting yourself and complying with relevant laws and regulations.
Conclusion
Launching a new WordPress site is a huge accomplishment that deserves to be celebrated. By taking the time to properly prepare and optimize your site before going live, you‘re setting yourself up for long-term success. This pre-launch checklist covers all the bases, from technical fundamentals to on-page SEO to legal considerations.
Treat this checklist as a starting point and adapt it to your unique needs and situation. Your pre-launch workflow will evolve over time as you launch more sites and gain experience. The important thing is to be thorough and not rush the process in your excitement to go live.
If you get stuck or need guidance on any part of launching your WordPress site, don‘t hesitate to seek help. The WordPress community is full of knowledgeable professionals who are happy to share their expertise. You can find support through online forums, WordPress meetups, or by hiring a consultant.
With careful planning and execution, your WordPress site will be ready to make a big splash from day one. Here‘s to a successful launch and all the exciting growth and opportunities to come!
