Are you wondering what going live means?
Your website (which is made up of a bunch of files) is hosted on a server somewhere through a hosting company (like bluehost) where you have a hosting package. You also have a domain (i.e., www.example.com) that you registered with a domain register. This can be with your hosting company or elsewhere. Your domain name servers (DNS) map the domain to the corresponding IP address at your hosting account where you are renting space on their servers.
Another important thing to consider is your email. Your mail can be hosted at your hosting company or elsewhere. The MX record tells your server where to send emails that have an address using your domain. These MX records need to be configured correctly.
Part of the process also needs to consider your old site structure and and redirects that need to occur. You do not want to lose your current traffic and SEO page rankings on popular pages.
So when we make your website live we go through the follow steps:
- Discuss and changes in new site structure and SEO considerations to plan out the SEO considerations and redirects required.
- Make sure you have a supportive hosting account that we can access and create a database.
- When required we set up a “coming soon” landing page if required.
- Complete testing your new website on the dev site and get the ok from you that it’s all good to go. We have a complete checklist that includes all links, menus, plugins, metatags, forms, sitemaps, shopping cart, payment integration, email notifications, metatags, browser and mobile testing.
- Set up the database and install your new CMS.
- Move files over from our development server.
- Occasionally we set up a temporary url and test site on the new host if it is a big site that has a lot of functionally.
- Re-test all functionality, check for links and images, and assure the favicon is added including browser and mobile testing again.
- Start the domain move process – which involves pointing the DNS zone record from wherever your domain is located to the new ip address.
- Set up new emails if required or configure the MX records if you have moved hosting.
- Wait: Sometimes it take 12-24 hours for you domain address to propagate to the new address.
- More testing to make sure everything is working well. This includes adding google analytics code, other tracking code doing any final url re-directs and removing the “no-follows”, “no-index” from your website and submitting your new site and site map to search engines.
Written by Susan Jarema
InHouse Media, Web Strategist