Pre Launch

• Remove any dev output
  • Eg) print_r, var_dump, console.log, etc.
• Logging should be recorded in a dedicated log file on the server
• The log files should be rotated. Kinsta does this automatically. For custom logs, you’ll have to setup yourself, although in general there shouldn’t be custom logging in production unless it’s being monitored for specific reasons and finite time.
• Make sure the site shares well on different social networks via OG properties.

Post Live

Eg) Moving from preprod.site.com to site.com

1. Update URLs: wp search-replace //preprod.site.com //site.com. Also run the same search-replace without the leading slashes (wp search-replace preprod.site.com site.com) as internal urls in WP Blocks have their slashes escaped and are ignored by the previous query.
2. Update Emails: wp search-replace [email protected] [email protected]
3. Clear Cache: wp cache flush
4. Update Kinsta (or other hosts) domain config to accept site.com and www.site.com
5. Test the new configuration from your local machine by adding to your /etc/hosts: 35.203.98.50 site.com (or whatever IP the site is on).
6. Test for Broken Links or use Screaming Frog to crawl if it’s a smaller site.
7. Point the DNS to the new site. A -> IP & CNAME -> www.site.com
8. Install an SSL certificate and force HTTPS
9. Activate Caching and/or any production environment variables
10. Check the XML sitemap generated by Yoast SEO @ www.site.com/sitemap_index.xml, then set Yoast to prevent indexing of non pertinent content (for example the famous author archive pages).
11. Setup 301 redirects in Kinsta for one main domain. By convention, HTTPS:// (non-www).
12. Setup any 301 redirects if needed
13. Pagespeed Test make sure it receives at lease 80+
14. check for GA installed
15. broken links / images
16. presentable sharing preview on Facebook 
17. presentable SERP listings (configure SEO plugin to a sensible default)