site launch checklist

[derekeder]

Framing / Call to Action

• Make sure that the site has a clear call to action. This should not be 'hey look at this cool tool'. Rather, it should be a way for someone to engage in a meaningful way on the issue being presented.

Some examples:

• Join a mailing list (which means you need to create one)
• Attend an event
• Share on Facebook/Twitter
• Donate to a particular organization
• Create a Tumblr for people to share interesting findings (if it's a data access site)

Web Search Indexing

• If you have a staging site, tell the search engine robots not to index you with a robots.txt
• Make sure you allow indexing when you are ready to launch.

Google Analytics

• Create Google Analytics account
• Hook up the GA Tracking Code (typically in our analytics_lib.js file)
• Set up relevant Goals and Funnels
• Set up Google Webmaster Tools
• Verify site in Webmaster Tools with DNS TXT record
• Link Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics

Sharing & Rich Snippets

• Set up general meta tags
  • <meta name=“description”>
  • <meta name=“author”>
• Set up Facebook meta tags & validate here
  • <meta property=“og:site_name”>
  • <meta property=“og:title”>
  • <meta property=“og:type”>
  • <meta property=“og:description”>
  • <meta property=“og:url”>
  • <meta property=“og:image”>
• Set up Twitter meta tags & validate here
  • <meta name=“twitter:card”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:site”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:creator”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:description”> (note that this needs to be under 200 characters)
  • <meta name=“twitter:title”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:url”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:image:src”>
• Create 2-5 meme images using Canva or a similar tool

Mobile Friendliness

Test on various mobile devices:

• scrolling is easy
• nav bar works
• hoverable things are tappable
• charts/maps look ok

Page Speed

• run the site through https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Miscellaneous Polish

• add favicons, apple touch icons (http://www.favicomatic.com/)
• add 404 & 500 error pages

Load Testing

If your site relies on a database or server-side code, it should use caching and be load tested. If it's a static HTML or Jekyll site, you can skip this section.

• set up page caching
• write a script to load test all your pages. Here's a good example from Illinois Sunshine

Testing

• Plan for a day of bugfixing. This day should happen after you have added the last features you plan on adding.

GitHub Readme

If the site is open source, make sure the Readme.md is complete and accurate.

• open source this repo

Here's a few good examples:

• Geomancer
• Illinois Sunshine

The Readme should have the following sections:

• Overview
• Setup
• Running locally
• Team
• Errors / Bugs
• Pull Requests
• Copyright and License

Outreach

• Write up press release
• Identify who will be the primary person of contact and make their info prominent on the website and all PR
• Identify relevant media contacts to email
• Identify relevant social news sites (reddit, listservs, slack channels)
• Divide & conquer - send out the media blitz!