Day 32: Website Completion Checklist

To help you review your website, I’ve provided a list of just about everything a beginner needs to check in order to complete the project successfully.

As you’ll go through it, you’ll notice how you don’t actually have to worry about a lot of these items if you choose the best hosting plan, themes and plugins that take care of many of the concerns from the beginning.

Appearance

Maintaining a consistent style or design in Astra shouldn’t be an issue with Astra unless you’ve changed colors and fonts manually instead of in the customizer.

• Is the branding consistent through the site, even if some page layouts are different?
• Does your site have the favicon?
• Is your main menu simple, not cluttered and confusing?
• Does the text contain any errors in meaning or grammar?
• Do you use the headings in the correct sequence?
• Do you only have one or two fonts, and are they easy to read?
• Is the font size the same for all the body text and uniform across the different headings?
• Do you have obvious, eye-catching call-to-action buttons?
• Do all the images and videos appear?
• Do your pages have a great balance of content and media? Make sure they don’t have too little or too much content.
• Do your pages have enough white space, so the user doesn’t feel overwhelmed? This is why the boxed layout is ideal.
• Are the pages you don’t want users to see set as drafts or private?
• Is all the dummy content on the site replaced or removed?
• Do you have your social media links in the header or footer?

Performance

• Do your pages, especially Home, load quickly and properly?
• Have you optimized all your images?
• Do all the images load properly?
• Do all the videos play correctly?
• Is your website responsive across different devices?
• Is your website responsive across different browsers?

Functionality

• Do all the buttons work and take users where they want to go?
• Do all the links work, including the ones in the menus, header and footer?
• Does the contact form work, and do you receive a notification each time you get a message?
• Do the payment methods, sign-up forms, appointment booking forms and such work?

Compliance

• Are you only using images and other content that’s copyright-free and royalty-free?
• Do you have a privacy policy page?
• Do you have a terms & condition page, if needed?
• Do you have cookies option and policy, especially if you’re expecting international visitors?

Security

Since you have an awesome hosting plan, you don’t need to worry about performing backups.

• Do you have a strong admin user password? Do you remember it, or is it saved in your browser, email, etc.?
• Does your contact form have a captcha or anti-spam measure?
• Do you have a security plugin that alerts you when an admin user logs in and blocks users after multiple failed login attempts?
• Are comments disabled? If they’re not, do you have an anti-spam tool?

Future Planning

You don’t want your users to experience any interruptions with your website, so go to Billing in your hosting account to confirm that you will be charged once the first term is up.

If you don’t set your domain to auto-renew, you could end up in the nightmarish situation of your domain being bought by someone else and being unable to get it back.

• Are your hosting and domain set up to auto-renew?
• If you have other team members, will they be working on the backend and if so, who will provide them training on WordPress?
• Do you have a site maintenance plan for managing security, WordPress updates, and content updates?