Website Launch Checklist: 20 Things to Check Before Going Live (UK)

Launching a website involves a dozen small systems that all have to work on day one – and the ones people forget (email records, backups, the contact form) are exactly the ones that embarrass you in week one. Here is the checklist we wish every new site owner ran before flipping the switch. Twenty checks, roughly in order.

Domain & DNS

1. Domain registered in your name. The registrant should be your business – not your designer or developer. Check the WHOIS now; it’s a two-minute job that prevents an expensive recovery later.

2. Auto-renew on, with a working payment card and a renewal contact email on a different domain.

3. Nameservers pointing at your hosting – see our guide to pointing your domain at your hosting.

4. www and non-www both resolve, with one 301-redirecting to the other – pick one canonical form and stick to it.

Security & resilience

5. SSL certificate installed and forced – every http URL should redirect to https, with no “mixed content” warnings. Our SSL guide covers setup.

6. Automatic backups running – and, crucially, you have done one test restore. A backup you’ve never restored is a hope, not a plan.

7. Admin accounts locked down – unique passwords, two-factor authentication, no account literally named “admin”. Run our security checklist if you’re on WordPress.

8. Software current – core, theme and plugins updated; anything unused deleted, not just deactivated.

Email

9. Professional email on your domain created and connected to your devices – hello@yourbusiness.co.uk, not a Gmail address on your shiny new site.

10. SPF, DKIM and DMARC records set so your mail actually arrives – the difference between inbox and junk. Plain-English setup in our deliverability guide.

11. Contact form tested end-to-end – submit it, and confirm the message arrives at Gmail and Outlook addresses, not just your own. Forms that silently fail are the most common launch-week fault we see.

Content & pages

12. Placeholder content gone – search your site for “lorem”, “coming soon”, and the theme demo’s sample text and images.

13. Legal basics present – privacy policy, cookie notice if you set cookies, and (for UK limited companies) your registered company details displayed.

14. 404 page exists and helps – links home and to key pages rather than a dead end.

15. Favicon and social sharing preview set – paste your URL into a social post preview to check the title and image that appear.

Performance & search

16. Speed sanity check – test your key pages and fix the big offenders (usually oversized images). Our Core Web Vitals guide explains the scores in plain English.

17. Search engines allowed in – the number-one launch mistake: “Discourage search engines” left ticked from development. Check Settings → Reading, and confirm robots.txt isn’t blocking everything.

18. Google Search Console verified and sitemap submitted – you can’t fix what you can’t see, and Search Console is where problems (indexing, security, mobile) surface first.

19. Analytics installed – GA4 or self-hosted Matomo, tested with a real visit before launch day so day-one data exists.

The one everyone forgets

20. A calendar reminder for week one – recheck the contact form, review analytics and Search Console, confirm the first automatic backup actually ran, and click every menu item on a phone. Launches fail quietly; five minutes of checking catches it.

FAQs

How long before my new site appears on Google?

With Search Console verified and a sitemap submitted, indexing typically starts within days. Ranking for competitive terms takes months – indexing and ranking are different things.

Do I need all of this for a small brochure site?

Yes – this list is the small-site version. Larger sites add staging environments, load testing and redirect maps on top.

Can my host handle any of this for me?

A good one handles most of the infrastructure half automatically: SSL, backups, email records and sane DNS come pre-configured on Switchweb plans, which leaves you the content half. And if you’re launching soon and want a second pair of eyes on the list, ask us – we like launches that go quietly.