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.