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Important Things To Do To Your WordPress Site Before Going Live

Here is a WordPress website checklist before going live.

Building a website involves a tedious and long process from planning to wireframes, UX, markup, designing, developing and finally testing. When all this is done, you will feel like it is time to go live with your WordPress website. However, you need to know that every day, numerous websites get released to the web, and yours must stand out from the beginning to sustain the first traffic. In this case, before pressing that red button to go live with your WordPress site, carry out the following procedures to be sure you a releasing a clean final product.

1. Secure Admin Area

WordPress is one of the renowned content management systems in the world and a popular target for most hackers. However, it is possible to run your WordPress site for years without encountering any security issues if you take your time to secure your WordPress admin area. Consider investing in a reliable firewall that will guarantee security for your site and close any loophole for hackers to attack.

2. Check For 404 Errors

If you can remember a time when you tried to access a certain site and you were slapped with a 404 error, you know very well that, that is a very bad user experience that will discourage users from visiting your site again. In this case, you must make sure that all your tabs on your WordPress site are working well including all links attached to them. Usually, if you add your site to Google Webmaster Tools or Google Search console, it would be very easy to monitor pages that give 404 errors through the crawl report. However, since it’s a new site, it is possible you have not added your site yet to these tools, and you will have to check for the errors manually. The good thing is that you can also set an email alert for these errors on your site to help you monitor and fix them easily and in real time.

3. Consider Google Analytics

You will need Google analytics right from the beginning to help you track how users are interacting with your website. You will know details such as how many users are visiting your site every day, where they are coming from, everything they do on your site and when they leave. When you install Google analytics before launching your site, you will also know how the launching efforts came out. You will also be able to track how your site is performing every day.

4. Remove Test Posts And Links

When developing your WordPress site, it is possible you created numerous test posts to make sure certain commands are working well. For instance, the WordPress CMS creates a sample post known as ‘Hello World,’ and you must remove it and any other test post created on the way before going live. Also, remember to change the authors of your post to reflect the actual user and not the editor.

5. Social Media Integration And SEO Settings

Digital marketing tools are very important when you are launching your site which means you must ensure that they are all put in place and working properly. Ensure that people can easily find you through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube among others. The links on social media directing users to your site and those on your site directing them to different social media must work properly to attract traffic to your site and keep the interaction active. Another thing that will increase traffic to your site is search engines, and therefore you must consider having a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin on your site. If you don’t know how to install or use SEO, consider contracting a professional digital marketer.

6. Create A Backup

Once you feel that your website is ready for launching and have done all the counterchecks, you need to create a backup solution for your website. With a backup, you are sure that your site is safe and secure and in case something goes wrong, it will be easy to recover it. Consider using either the free or the paid-for WordPress backup plugins that are very easy to install on your website.

Do not be in a hurry to launch your WordPress website to avoid giving users a half-baked product. Consider checking all the things above to be sure that you are providing the best user experience.

Adrian Rubin

Adrian Rubin fell in love with graphics from playing video games since he was young. He now writes stories creatable from playing video games. Adrian Rubin is also a photographer, a regular traveler and a humanitarian who loves animals.