Our Web Building Task List

Perhaps the most boring blog post of all time, but here’s the tasks we do on a typical website build.
As many of these are not seen by the client we are sharing for transparency.

Basic set up tasks

1. Set up a domain name record (for the development site)
2. Create space on the server
3. add security certificate
4. Set up database
5. Set the PHP version
6. Install WordPress
7. Set time zones
8. Add coming soon page
9. Create user accounts for all
10. Send Account passwords securely
11. Delete the standard plugins and theme (leaving the newest theme as fallback)
12. Delete sample pages and post
13. Install premium themes and plugins
14. Activate Licence key for all premium software
15. Setup transactional email system to send emails from the server
16. Configure SEO plugin
17. Configure WordPress security plugins (firewall, alerts and scans)
18. Make the site connect to our master maintenance site
19. Add up-time monitoring
20. Set up site backup schedules
21. Set up Project Management System and personalise on boarding.
22. Customise image cropping
23. Clear Stencil’s image library account and set a new password for the client’s use
24. Configure automatic image automation to the sites requirements.
25. Reset Userback for client design feedback
26. Set up blog (if needed)
27. Customise blog comments setting to the site requirements
28. Add blog spam protection
29. Set up Forms (spam protection, email notification GDPR settings )
30. Test forms
31. Add Analytics code
32. Anonymize Google Analytic (as appropriate)
33. Check WordPress permalinks
34. Add social share
35. Set up Newsletter subscriptions
36. Change all post and pages made by us is set to the client’s account
37. Optimise database (clear revisions, transient data and any orphan database tables)
38. Check server resources used (High RAM resources or long Time to First Byte issues)

Basic design tasks

1. Add Favicon
2. Create Pages
3. Create custom 404 (ie. page not found)
4. Create a custom privacy page to GDPR standards.
5. Create and thank you pages and connect to forms
6. Set up WordPress menus
7. Set site header and text fonts
8. Save brand colours to the theme and page builder
9. Set up Header layouts
10. Set up footer layout (with Copyright details)
11. Set up Search layouts
12. Set up blog ( any other dynamic achieve pages)
13. Set up blog singular pages
14. Basic Browser testing (Chrome Firefox and Microsoft’s Edge)
15. Basic mobile and tablet responsiveness

Launch tasks

1. Set DNS record for the new domain
2. Turn off “coming soon” page
3. Check robot txt (allow search engines to crawl)
4. Set www and non www redirects
5. Rewrite the database to the new domain
6. The security certificates working on all pages and post (no mixed content)
7. Configure and test caching for speed
8. Check forms again
9. Add page caching and test speeds
10. Take external back-up.