Who this is for. The person who owns the launch of a site on Core dna, usually the agency's lead developer or project manager. Print it, fill in a name and a date against each line, and tick it; afterwards nothing on launch day depends on memory.

The order matters more than it looks: several items depend on the one before, and a few cannot be undone once the domain moves. The two missed most often, the redirect map and a test payment or tax provider left active, each have a page of their own.

Two weeks before

ItemDetail
☐Redirect map built from every URL the old site serves, imported on staging and tested in fullRedirect mapping
☐Search baseline captured from the old site: titles, canonical URLs, structured data, indexed pages, top queriesBefore-and-after checks
☐Error pages for not found and server error styled and returning the right status; the server error page depends on nothing that can itself failThe edges of a page
☐Mail sender set: the Mailer settings Default sender email and Default sender name on the client's domain, and the client's own SendGrid account in SendGrid API Key with that domain authenticated. Left blank, mail goes out under the platform's shared sender identityAsk Core dna for the DNS records the domain needs
☐Analytics and tags load on the production hostname onlyTwo legitimate uses
☐Speed checked on staging: the main page types can be cached, and the budgets are metMeasuring cache effectiveness

The week before

ItemDetail
☐Hostnames added to the production environment, with the one visitors should see marked primaryOne hostname
☐SSL certificates arranged for every hostname, the bare domain includedAsk Core dna; check each in a browser on launch day
☐DNS time-to-live lowered on the records that will change, so the switch, and any switch back, takes minutesAt the client's DNS provider
☐Live payment keys entered on each payment method, ready to take out of Test ModePayment methods and how a payment runs
☐Test providers disabled: no Mock Pay method active, no mock tax provider on a zone or as the default providerDisabling test providers
☐Sitemap settings checked: each content type that should be listed has its "generate in sitemap" setting onRobots and the sitemap
☐Content frozen on the old site, or a plan for what changes there after the copyAgree with the client
☐Launch-day roles named: who switches DNS, who watches what, who decides on rollbackLaunch-day monitoring

Launch day, in this order

ItemDetail
☐Release deployed to production and its commit confirmed liveSeeing which commit is live
☐Redirects in place on the production site, every one published. Imported on staging, they are there already, because a site's environments share their records; import them now only if the build was done on a separate copyImporting in bulk
☐Robots opened: no noindex on production pages, and robots.txt allows crawlingRobots and the sitemap
☐DNS switchedAt the client's DNS provider
☐Every hostname checked: HTTPS works, and each non-primary hostname redirects to the primary oneOne hostname
☐Cache cleared after the redirects and the robots change, because a stored page is served before redirects are checked. Clearing an environment's cache in the admin needs a super administratorThe manual clear
☐Redirect map tested on production, every entryTesting every entry
☐Cache warmed: the most-visited URLs requested once, signed out, so the first visitors do not all wait for a renderWarming the cache
☐A real order placed with a live card and refunded, if the site sellsThe live check
☐Sitemap submitted to search engines once /sitemap.xml answers 200 with contentRobots and the sitemap
☐First-hour monitoring runningWhat to watch, and where

The week after

ItemDetail
☐Not-found URLs reviewed daily from analytics and the search console, and missing redirects addedRedirect mapping
☐Template errors reviewed dailyReading the error log
☐Health checks running, each with a named ownerHealth checks worth automating
☐DNS time-to-live raised back to normalAt the client's DNS provider
☐Old site's hosting kept until the redirects have been tested and traffic has settled; not cancelled on launch dayWhat cannot be rolled back
☐Handover delivered to the client's teamHandover