When all the design work is completed, and the store is fully stocked with products, it’s time to start thinking about going live. It can be intimidating, especially if you haven’t done it before. Hopefully our Magento Launch Checklist will take some of the stress out of going live…
Magento Launch Checklist
- Favicon
- HTML Head
- Placeholder Images
- Contact Information
- Transactional Emails Logos
- Transactional Emails Template
- Tax Settings
- Shipping Origin
- Shipping Methods
- Payment Methods
- 404 Page
- Clear Test Data
- Product Inventory
- Combine JS files
- Combine CSS files
- Index Management
- Caching
- System Compilation
- Google Analytics
- Google Sitemap
- Newsletter Subscriptions
- SSL Certificate
- Module Licenses
- PHP Configuration
- Turn on Cron
- Log Cleaning
- Disable Unnecessary Modules
- Backup strategy
- Speed up Magento
- Base URLs
- Point DNS
Place a favicon image in your theme’s folder skin/frontend/default/your-theme/favicon.ico
Change the title and set the meta description and keywords, these are important for SEO.
System → Configuration →General → Design → HTML Head.
Create placeholder images for your site and place them in: catalog/products/placeholder/image.jpg, catalog/products/
placeholder/small_image.jpg and catalog/products/placeholder/thumbnail.jpg. Alternatively they
can be uploaded in admin: System → Configuration → Catalog → Catalog → Product Image Placeholders.
Ensure all the store information and email addresses are set. You will be able to find these in System → Configuration → General and System → Configuration → Store Email Addresses.
Transactional emails use a different logo to the default one. Make sure that the image that you want to display is used instead of the default image. You can upload here: System → Configuration → Design → Transactional Emails
Alternatively you can place your own logo, named as logo_email.gif in your images folder in the skin directory.
Magento makes heavy use of templates for transactional emails. You can get access to all of these templates in System → Transactional Emails. Once inside this admin panel, you can load the default templates and modify them as needed, then save your new custom template. Then, assign them to be used in System → Configuration → Sales → Sales Emails.
Here is where you setup tax zones (states) and their tax rates(rules). It’s all pretty easy in Magento.
These can be found in System → Configuration → Sales → Tax
The shipping origin needs to be set to the correct country/state in order to use the appropriate tax rates.
System → Configuration →Shipment Settings
Configure UPS, USPS or FedEX shipping here. You may need to have an account(FedEx) or signup for API access(USPS).
System → Configuration→Shipment Methods
This is where you setup your payment gateway, so it’s pretty important if you ever want to get paid.
The best options are Paypal and Authorize.net, which are default in Magento.
System → Configuration→Payment Methods
Modify the default 404 page which can be found in CMS → Pages
Customize as you desire.
If you have a lot of test orders, it might be a good idea to get rid of them.
Remove all products, orders and customers that were created during development
Import product spreadsheet with stock levels before going live.
I have a handy tool for importing inventory
Combine all of your JavaScript files into one: System → Configuration → Developer →JavaScript Settings.
Combine all your CSS file into one file: System → Configuration → Developer → CSS Settings
Make sure you have re-indexed after making any catalogue changes.
Caching, although on by default would have been the first thing you disabled when beginning development. So, remember to re-enable it.
You may be able to speed up your Magneto store by using compilation.
You will be able to find settings for this in System → Tools
→ Compilation.
Magento works seamlessly with Google Analytics. Set up your Google Analytics account and then put your account number in System → Configuration → Sales → Google API → Google Analytics.
When all your products and categories are complete, you will want to create a sitemap. This is very helpful to search engines, so make sure to do this before going live and also make sure to create a link to it in your robots.txt file. Find sitemap in Catalog → Google Sitemap.
Test that customers can sign up and unsubscribe and that newsletters can be sent out. Review and modify templates as needed.
Make sure you have a valid SSL certificate installed on your server. This is a must for the checkout process.
Some extensions from Magento connect require you to enter a license key when setting up. Make sure that this key is still going to be valid when you move domains and obtain a new key if required for your live domain.
Make sure that you have reasonable values for memory_limit and max_execution_time. This is set in the .httaccess file. While you are in the .httaccess file, make sure to set compression to enabled. This will allow your server to serve compressed html/js/css files, which will reduce page load time.
Some things in Magento require scripts to be run periodically in order to keep things up to date and working correctly. Cron settings are in System →Configuration → Advanced → System. You will also need to setup a cron job in your cpanel, so that it runs your cron.php file every 5 minutes. You can also place a cron job status page on your server to help in setting up cron, and making sure jobs are actually being run.
Magento keeps logs in the database, which, over time, can become bloated. There is an option in admin to clean the logs periodically, it can be found in: System → Configuration → Advanced→ System → Log cleaning. This will need enabling as it is disabled by default
It’s not likely that your store uses every feature built in to Magento, so why have it enabled? You can disable modules in System → Configuration → Advanced. For example, ones that you might not be using include Mage_Poll and Mage_Tag.
Before you launch is a good time to talk to your host about Backups. You will want to know how often they backup and also what kind of backups. It’s better to figure this stuff out now, before you really, really need it.
Here are a few resources for testing your Magento store:
Webpagetest.org
Mage Speed Test
Fire Bug for Firefox
I can also recommend Lightspeed, which will increase your store’s page load times exponentially, even on a shared hosting environment.
Right before pointing your DNS to your new store, you will need to change the URLs.
These are URLs that are stored in the database table core_config_data that can be modifed in the admin: System → Configuration → Web.
When you move the site, they will need to be updated otherwise all URLs will be referring back to the staging site. Don’t forget the trailing forward slash!
Now that you have everything configured, it’s time to point your DNS to your server.
Since it will take a few hours for everything to propagate throughout the internet, pat yourself on the back and grab a cold one of your preference.
If you have worked your way thru this checklist, you have definitely earned it.