The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley.Robert Burns, To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, 1785
In my previous article—The beginning—I drew from my personal experience and tried to present an overview of the activities that any website designer would encounter. This article summarises those activities in point form, as a kind of checklist, in preparation for the website’s public launch.
You may find this checklist helpful.
I've double-checked, as best I’m able, that I’ve put everything in order. This is my pre-launch list of things to do.
Mission statement and statement of objectives.
Website (and domain) name.
The financials: online banking, EFT processing, registering the business name.
The legals: privacy and terms of use policy statements prepared.
Instal Joomla! CMS component: add the legal notices, login form. Perform basic functionality unit testing.
Construct the sitemap.
Submit the sitemap to Google: verify that you can search Google for your website.
Implement Google Analytics.
Implement site security. (Akeeba Admin Tools).
Implement website backup procedures (Akeeba Backup).
Build the website “home” page.
Design and build the navigation menu(s).
Build the member sign-up page. Test the member sign-up process.
Write the website backstory, as a series of articles in a running blog, that explains how, why and for whom the website came into existence.
Establish the social media presence on Facebook and Twitter.
Link the website to the social media accounts and vice-versa.
Create the website discussion forum.
Perform system tests.
Refer the proposed website design model to the business focus group.
Adopt the BFG’s recommendations.
Go / no-go?
I think we’re actually ready for the public launch …
