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After building your website, now you are ready to launch your website.
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels
Do testing your website
Once you have created your website and are ready to launch it, it is now your responsibility to test and ensure that your website is working as you expect. Why should I test? This is because by testing you make sure that your visitor can get all the information you have on your website correctly. If they leave the website unable to read the content due to some issues it will be a loss to you.
What do you need to check before launch?
Check all content for typos and grammatical errors. Double-check the content and make sure it is free of errors.
Check if all the links are working properly – there are a lot of online tools to do this, here are some sites to do it: https://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/ https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/
See if all devices like mobile phones, tablets, desktops can view your website.
Check all your forms
- Fill out and submit the form – check if the data has been submitted, go to the Dashboard and check if this data is in the backend.
- Visit the email inbox to check the email received with data submitted by you.
- Submit the form without filling in data and check whether the warning message is shown.
- Check that all data validation on the form is working.
- View your website on your mobile, tablet (whatever you have with you) and desktop.
- Share the link to get feedback from your friends. (In many cases, they will list your problems and come back to you, which is a good idea to fix before reaching your audience)
Infrastructure
After testing is completed now it is time to launch your website for that the infrastructure should be ready, All the below services will be provided by all the hosting service providers. To name a few GoDaddy, Hostgator, Bigrock etc. Choose the best service provider with good support. Compare their features, price, and feedbacks
Here is a list of items you need to launch your website
- Domain Name – You must purchase a domain name, ie your website address – URL from a service provider, which is a time-based subscription that you must purchase for as long as three to five years. A renewal notice will be sent three months before the expiration date, which will help renew earlier to avoid expiration. When an expired domain comes into the open market the domain is more expensive to repurchase if someone has purchased it. Typically, the suffixes for your domain name, such as .com or .in, .uk, are based on your country. In general, it would be nice if your domain name was shortened to six or seven characters, such as Google and Bing.
- Hosting Account – You need to purchase a hosting server from the service provider, here you will keep all the files of your website and upload if you have your database. When building your website with Builder, you do not need this. Like the domain, this one must be renewed before the expiration date.
- SSL (optional but recommended for SEO) – SSL are protocols for establishing authenticated and encrypted links between networked computers. The SSL certificate must be purchased from a service provider. It was purchased for a limited time, so it is important to renew before the expiration date. If you want to list your website in search engines, it is highly recommended as search engines give extra scores to the website with SSL. Also, this is essential if you are collecting any important information from users such as credit card numbers.
- Email Address: The email address of your business must be the same as your domain name. This is important because if you send emails from your website, they must match the domain name of your website, otherwise, your email and IP address will be marked as spam. All your emails will be delivered to the Inbox Spam folder. You must configure your email address with the email service provider. Configure SPF and Dmarc to protect your domain from phishing. In the SPF, you must add the IP address of your website to indicate where the emails will be sent from. This allows the email server to verify that the email was sent from your website. More information about SPF and Dmarc can be found here.
- Staging Server: (optional) If you are constantly updating your website, it is a good idea to update, verify, test and move website files from the staging server to the production server.
- Backup: Purchase a backup plan from the hosting service provider. The backup will always protect you from data loss. Automatic backup can be configured at specific frequencies such as daily, weekly or monthly.
- Security (optional): To protect your website from hackers, you can place your website behind a powerful firewall, which will prevent attacks and fix malware issues.
Purchase and launch
Depending on your needs, you can select products from the list above and purchase from a service provider. Use your email address and credit card when you sign up for an account with a service provider. This will enable you to access your account with the service provider, and you will receive email notifications when the items you purchased expire. Share your login credentials with the agency or give access to the agency account. Now, you can ask the agency to launch the website.
You launched your website, congratulations. Enjoy your business development journey with your website.
Conclusion
We, as an agency, help you build and launch your website. We have over 15 years of experience in this field and we have a good understanding of how to select service providers, select the infrastructure materials required for your website and build them. You get a seamless experience launching your website. Contact us for a proposal for the development of your website.