The Essential WordPress Pre-Launch Checklist: Ensuring Optimal Performance and Security

List of Items You Must Check Before Your WordPress Website Goes Live

Using WordPress to build a website, WordPress can utilize plug-ins, and you don't need to have a foundation in code to build a website. However, knowing how to use WP and skillfully utilizing WP are two completely different concepts. Here we share with you what necessary checks we need to do to go live after we have made a website with WordPress.

Content checking of the website

1. Text checking

After populating the website with text content, we first need to go through each page from start to finish. Look at the grammar, words there are no typos, the sentence is not fluent. After checking the most basic words, we also need to check the content of the page, check AI. recommended weight checking tools:QuetextThe

It is important that the repeatability in the check results be maintained at5%below. The location of the duplicate content will be marked in the result, so you can modify it directly.

2. Image inspection

Check to see if the images are compressed, the image file size will largely affect the loading speed of your website. It is recommended to useWebp formatof the image can save space. Next is the ALT tag of the image, check if it has been added, you can check it in the WP backend media library.

3. Link checking

Links here mainly refer to internal links. Whether the links that need to be jumped in each page can be successfully jumped to the associated pages, such as some pictures on thelink (on a website),anchor textetc. It is recommended to set the jump link to open in a new window to improve user experience and prevent user loss.

Breadcrumb navigation must be added to every page, which is one of the most common forms of internal linking, and the way to add it is simple. Many SEO plugins come with breadcrumb navigation, such asYoast SEO. Shown is the Elementor editor, which allows you to search in the element "Bread"Just drag and drop it to the appropriate location.

4. Multimedia content checking

Multimedia content mainly refers to some Youtube videos linked on the website, check if these videos can be played smoothly.

functional check

1. Website forms

The form of the website is the last step of inquiry conversion and must be scrutinized. The first is the design of the form, try to be as simple as possible, TOB type of independent station form usually includes name, phone/email, message board. Try not to set too many mandatory items, get customer contact information is the most important.

Check that there is no privacy protection set up for the form to prevent spam and automated attacks. If you are using a form that comes with Elementor, you can follow the tutorial to install it:https://elementor.com/help/recaptcha-elementor-integration/

Finally, test yourself to see if sending and receiving is successful and to see if there are any other problems.

2. Website navigation check

Check that the site navigation is clear and usable, includingmenurespond in singingsubmenuWordPress comes with Menu as long as you set up the containment relationship between the menus, generally not a big problem. If you use other plugins to do Mega Menu, you also need to set the relationship between the pages in the page.

For example, pages in Mega Menu cannot automatically recognize hierarchical relationships, so you need to set the hierarchical relationships in page, which can be found in WP's Page SettingPage Attributes, just specify the page hierarchy.

Website Performance Check

1. Website loading speed

The loading speed of the website is very important and determines the bounce rate of the website, as well as an important factor that affects the SEO results. You can use Google's official speed measurement toolPageSpeedCheck the loading speed of the website.

Generally speaking, mobile should be greater than 60 points, desktop should be greater than 80 points, the faster the better.WordPress website can use some caching plug-ins, such as W3 Total Cache, Nitropack and so on.

2. Check the number of plug-ins on the site

Plug-ins not only affect the loading speed of the site, but also may lead to problems with the site. Too many plug-ins can lead to a mismatch between certain plug-ins. It is recommended that the total number of plug-ins be kept below 10, the fewer the better.

3. Image optimization

Image optimization has already been mentioned, try to compress image files to reduce loading time.

safety check

1. Installation of SSL certificate

Links without security certificates display exclamation marks and customer trust in the site is lost.

2. Installation of security plug-ins

In order to prevent your website from being maliciously attacked, you can install a security plugin such as Wordfence or Sucuri, and your website will be protected to a certain extent.

3. Website backup

This is mandatory to ensure that regular backups have been set up and that you are able to restore your data.

Adaptive checking for each device of the website

WordPress doesn't come with adaptive features like SaaS template stations, and needs to bemanual adjustmentThe compatibility of mobile phone is especially important, Google prioritizes the inclusion of mobile phone when including pages. Especially the compatibility of the cell phone, Google in the inclusion of the page to prioritize the inclusion of cell phones, adaptive bad will affect the inclusion of Google and customer browsing experience.

Basic SEO Checks

1. Page keyword layout

Before building a website, you should do keyword research for each page and have your own keyword library. Check whether the page appears to want to layout the keywords, if not add to the content.

2. Page TDK

TDK is called metadata and is presented in the SERPs.TDK writing is very important and can directly affect the click-through rate of a website.

3. Sitemap

Generate and submit XML sitemap to GSC to speed up page indexing.

4. robots.txt

Make sure that the robots.txt file is configured correctly to allow search engines to crawl the pages that should be indexed.

Web analytics tools

GA4 and GSC are must install website analyzing tools, detailed installation tutorials have been written in the previous article, you can check.

laws and regulations

1. Website privacy page

If you don't know how to write a privacy page, you can use the privacy page template that comes with WordPress. You can find the template in theSettingshit the nail on the headPrivacyClickCreateIf you want to create a privacy page, you can create a privacy page. Just specify that privacy page when you are done creating it.

2. Cookie notification

Due to European advertising policy reasons, cookies are required to place ads on Google for the European region, and previous articles have talked about how to create cookie pop-ups.

Checking the user experience

Once the above steps are completed, you need to go through all the pages, or you can ask your colleagues to help you check them, get feedback and make adjustments based on the feedback.

Website on line

After the above steps have been checked, the website can be put online and have SEO attributes. There are a few more points to note after going live:

1. Liberalization of inclusion

The process of creating a website is blocked by search engines. Before going live, be sure to liberalize the inclusion.

2. Site language

Foreign trade independent site site language must be English, check if the site language isEnglish (language)The

Congratulations, if all the above steps are completed and checked for errors, then your website is ready to go live!

Summary:

Before a WordPress website goes live, a series of detailed checks must be performed to ensure that the site is content-free, performance-optimized, safe, secure, and SEO-compliant. This includes text and image checking, link and multimedia content checking, website form and navigation checking, website loading speed and number of plugins checking, image optimization, security measures, device adaptability, on-page keyword layouts, TDK settings, Sitemap submission, robots.txt configuration, legal and regulatory compliance, and user experience checking. Going through these steps ensures that your website goes live smoothly and provides the best experience for your users.