A website launch checklist you can actually verify
A launch checklist is only useful if each line says how to prove it's done. This one runs in order, from content a week out to the hour after go-live, and every item comes with the test that confirms it. Work through it on the final version, not a draft.
A week before: content and facts
| Check | How to verify it |
|---|---|
| Every fact is current | Print or export the page text and read it against your price list, opening hours and address. Mark each number with a tick only when you've compared it to the source. |
| No placeholder text survives | Search the page for "lorem", "example.com", "555", "Jane Doe" and square brackets. Each hit is a leftover. |
| Claims are provable | For every figure, quote or logo, ask: could I show where this came from? Delete what you can't. |
| Photos are yours or licensed | List each image and where it came from. Anything from a web search without a licence comes out. |
| Each image has a text alternative | Inspect each image and read its alt. It should say what the picture shows, or be empty if purely decorative. |
| Contact routes work | Click every email and phone link on a phone. The mail app and dialler should open with the right details. |
Three days before: function
- Submit every form yourself. Use a real address you can check. Confirm the submission arrives where you expect: your inbox, the dashboard, Slack, a spreadsheet. Then check the visitor sees a clear confirmation.
- Click every link. Navigation, footer, buttons and in-text links. A link that goes to
#or to a page that doesn't exist is a dead end for visitors and a bad sign for search engines. - Test on a real phone. Open the preview on your own phone, on mobile data rather than Wi-Fi. Look for text you have to zoom to read, buttons too close together and anything wider than the screen.
- Try the keyboard. On a laptop, press Tab from the top of the page. You should see where focus is at every step and reach every link and field in a sensible order.
- Check payment and booking links. If buttons open a checkout from your payment provider, run one test purchase in the provider's test mode, or buy the cheapest item and refund it.
The day before: policies and search
- Legal pages exist and match reality. If the site collects anything (a contact form counts), it needs a privacy policy that names what you collect and why. Read yours against your forms. See how to write a privacy policy for a small website.
- Page titles and descriptions are written. View the page source and read the
<title>and<meta name="description">. Each page should have its own. - Search engines aren't blocked. Open
/robots.txton the live address. A line readingDisallow: /underUser-agent: *stops crawlers from reading the whole site. - There's a sitemap. Open
/sitemap.xml. Every page you want found should be listed, with the address you'll actually use.
Launch day: the address
- Connect the domain early in the day, not an hour before an announcement, since DNS can take time to settle. Follow how to connect a custom domain.
- Confirm HTTPS. Load
https://plus your domain in a private window. The padlock should appear with no warning, and every image should load. - Load the site from another network. Ask someone elsewhere to open it, or use your phone off Wi-Fi. If they see an old site, DNS caches haven't caught up yet.
- Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools once the domain is live, so the right address gets crawled.
- Send one more test submission through the live form on the final domain.
The first week after
Look at the site's visits each day for the first week: a site with no visits after an announcement usually means a broken link in the announcement, not a lack of interest. Reply to the first enquiries quickly; they're also your test that notifications reach you. Keep a list of the questions people ask, because each one is a gap in the page.
What Anticode checks for you
Several of these items are automatic in Anticode, though none replaces reading your own facts. The release checklist runs every publish check without publishing, so you can see where you stand days before launch. The design gate blocks publishing a page that lacks a language, a phone viewport, a name, visible keyboard focus, reduced-motion support or alt text, or that still contains placeholder text or empty links (an empty href, # or a javascript: address). It doesn't test whether outside URLs work, so clicking every link yourself still matters. The Critic flags stock AI phrases. Sentinel runs twelve security checks on the exact HTML, and the server re-runs the ones that matter for a public page when you publish.
Each published site also serves its own robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt, plus a Privacy Policy and Terms written from what the site actually collects. Those documents are a starting point, not legal advice.
What no checklist covers
Automated checks can confirm a page has alt text; they can't tell you the alt text is accurate. They can confirm a form posts to your own site; they can't tell you anyone will read the submissions. Anticode doesn't verify your prices, hours or claims, doesn't submit your sitemap to search engines for you, and has no built-in A/B testing to compare launch versions.
Questions people ask
How long before launch should I start checking?
A week is comfortable for a small site. It gives time to replace photos or rewrite a section without rushing, and to connect the domain a day or two early.
Should I launch quietly first?
Often, yes. Publishing a few days before announcing lets you catch problems with real traffic from friends before strangers arrive.
What's the most commonly missed item?
Testing the live form on the final domain. Forms tested in a preview can still fail later if notification settings or connectors weren't switched on.