[ ] 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.
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.
from the DataMade Site Launch Checklist
Framing / Call to Action
Some examples:
Web Search Indexing
Google Analytics
analytics_lib.js
file)Sharing & Rich Snippets
<meta name=“description”>
<meta name=“author”>
<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”>
<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”>
Mobile Friendliness
Test on various mobile devices:
Page Speed
Miscellaneous Polish
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.
Testing
GitHub Readme
If the site is open source, make sure the Readme.md is complete and accurate.
Here's a few good examples:
The Readme should have the following sections:
Outreach