Ensuring a Flawless Drupal Website Launch: Your Ultimate Pre-Launch Guide

So you are going to launch your brand new Drupal website ? AWESOME ! Have a look at our Pre-Launch checklist specially for drupal websites and see if you are taking care of everything. It’s a bit long but It’s worth checking it all.

Content

1. Semantic HTML5 tags are used properly and consistently
2. There are no unwanted site’s “external” resources
3. The site’s links does not go to 4xx and 5xx links
4. The site does not have un-resized images, and there are no images larger than 800KB
5. There are no spelling or grammar mistakes
6. Titles, labels and strings are properly capitalized
7. Images display correctly (not stretched, pixelated, or resized in CSS)
8. Testing content have been removed
9. Testing taxonomies have been removed
10. Testing accounts have been removed
11. Content has passed accessibility and “common-sense” tests
12. License information in footer is correct

Performance

1. The cron is properly configured and setup
2. Pages do not produce JavaScript errors
3. Image compression is 70%
4. Image manipulation is using ImageMagick instead of GD2
5. JavaScript is optimized and compressed
6. CSS is optimized and compressed
7.  Caching is enabled (Block and Page caching)
8.  (Devel) is disabled
9.  (Coder) is disabled
10. (Theme Developer) is disabled
11.  (Testing) is disabled
12.  (Database Logging) is disabled
13.  (Demo) is disabled
14.  (Views UI) module is disabled
15.  (Feeds UI) module is disabled
16.  (Display Suite UI) module is disabled
17.  (Theme Debug) module is disabled
18.  Other UI modules are disabled

Views are configured for caching output

1. Page cache max age is 5 mins or greater
2. Minimum cache lifetime is 5 mins or greater
3. Unwanted modules, are uninstalled and deleted
4. Page passes HTML validation
5. Page passes CSS validation
6. Memcache module is enabled and configured
7. (Display Suite UI) module is disabled
8. Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation module is enabled and configured
9. Theme images are optimized (optipng, jpegoptim)
10. The private files, and public files, and any other security issue reported in admin/reports/status is address and configured

Site Configuration

1. Check if site email is properly configured ([email protected])
2. Check if site default timezone, country and all regional settings are properly set
3. Check if all site forms, send to designated email addresses
4. Check if site uses third party service (not php mail) for sending email
5. Make sure that year is auto updated in the copyright footer
6. Check if $settings[‘trusted_host_patterns’] array in settings.php is filled with all trusted hostnames (with/without www).

Anti Drupalization

1. Unwanted full-node-pages redirect to the desired place. (Rabbit hole)
2. Search results page is themed
3. The node page redirects to defined homepage

Administration

1. WYSIWYG editor is limited for content entry standardization
2. The field groups are used in node/add forms for usability
3. Linkit module is being used for internal linking
4. The Masquerade module is enabled and configured
5. Guttenberg (Editor)

Security

1. Check that user1 username is: webmaster
2. The all views (specially /admin views) have access control
3. User1 password is complex
4. Site errors are hidden
5. Authenticated and Anonymous users do not have admin privileges
6. No users have super admin role, except webmaster
7. PHP filter is disabled. Or nobody has access to PHP filter except user1
8. Site has passed Security Review audit
9. Site has Username Enumeration Prevention module enabled
10. Password Policy module is enabled and configured
11. Security Kit module is enabled, configured and passed tests
12. Syslog module is enabled
13. The account creation setting. Write in comments
14. Check that there are no security releases for modules used in the site

Accessibility

1. 1.Site general layout passed WAVE test
2. Navigation and order is working in a right, intuitive and logical order
3. Page is navigable through tabs
4. Page is navigable through tabs

Coding

1. [For New Custom Modules] Check if site has passed Coder module review
2. The code is indented, and follows corresponding standards
3. The standard branching model is used
4. The code is documented
5. The site has all configuration managed in code.
6. The code structure is optimized and well documented.

Multilingual

1. The site has l10n_client enabled and working properly
2. The Administration pages has language properly configured
3. The site’s RTL CSS is properly done

Documentation

The old site is backed up and accessible from an alternative URL

In a Nutshell,

We have tried to cover a lot of things in this checklist but there are many other related to design, browser compatibility etc. To know more about it get in touch with us.