Wednesday 25 May 2011

Checklist before launching a website

If you are developing a small website for a hobby project or similar you might not have test scripts or a test plan. Here's a simple check list you can use for testing your site.

Design / Sign off
  • All relevant persons/stakeholders have been given the chance to comment on the design.
  • Relevant persons understand the concept/point of the site.
  • Someone other than you can use the site with ease.
  • Design has been tested on old projector with poor contrast. (There are tools to do this also)
Features
  • All pages have valid title and meta tags.
  • Other typical SEO guidelines.
  • 404 page.
  • Internal Server Error page.
  • Content can be printed? (Print style sheet).
  • Meta tags.
  • Fav icon.
  • Semantic Html
  • Added analytics. Website visitor tracking statistics. E.g. Google analytics.
  • Site map.
  • Friendly URLs
  • Form validation.
  • Mobile support.
  • Share buttons: Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn etc.
  • Contact form works.
  • humans.txt
Performance
  • Yslow.
  • Stess test.
  • Pages checked for page size. Page footprint of more than 1Mb is bad.
  • Caching evaluate. (Page output caching, data caching etc, web server caching, E-tags etc)
  • Log been checked for errors.
  • Home page downloads within 10 seconds or less.
Stability / accessibility
  • Tested in all relevant browsers such as IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera on different OS and with different versions?
  • Site tested without JS enabled in the browser.
  • Tested with various screen resolutions both small and large.
  • Site tested with W3C CSS validator.
  • Site tested with different screen resolutions and on iPad.
  • Site tested on mobile.
  • Site tested using accessibility toolbar etc.
  • Site tested with full JS error notification turned on.
  • Do you know your monthly bandwidth limit? Make sure your site resources are not to big and visited by to many people.
  • All assemblies checked for memory leaks.
Security
  • Backup.
  • Robots file.
  • System been evaluated against security threats.
  • OWASP guidelines evaluated.
  • Need to set up e-mail or SMS alerts? (There are monitoring services you can buy)
  • ASafaaWeb security analyzer
Content
  • Content placed consistently.
  • Tense/Style of writing consistent.
  • Dead links check.
  • No empty pages.
  • No Lorem Ipsum pages.
  • Pages spellchecked.
  • Content formatting consistent.
  • Alt text on images.
  • You have contact info, privacy, feedback, terms and copyright info.
  • Site tested with realistic content.
  • Site checked for missing resources (404 on images , js, etc.).
Content publishing related editor support
  • Nested lists.
  • Links.
  • Images in text.
  • Other text formatting.

1 comment:

  1. Sweet tips! You've done a great job covering the basics of what needs to be done in order to get your website up and running. I would suppose that these are services that a top seo company will provide for their clients whose online marketing campaigns involve launching a new website. Thanks for sharing.

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