The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist

Why should I care about CSS/HTML/JS validity, when I'm going to be checking if it works in all browsers, anyway?<p>I never understood the whole "Does it validate!!??!" mantra with HTML. So, what, I can't add my own custom attributes to HTML elements (which makes lots of JS magic possible) because the HTML spec will go berserk over it?<p>IMO, cross browser testing trumps all this validation nonsense (which all browsers have some bug somewhere with, anyway). Enough.

Nice list. I would add 'Test your ability to recover from backup'

<i>Check all bespoke/complex functionality</i><p>One of our recent suppliers is a security provider that offers a service we want to resell.<p>Their management website has a "mailto:" button for support. It doesn't work.<p>How can you a) break a mailto link in the first place, b) not notice the support option doesn't work, and c) expect me to trust you with security with attention to detail like that?<p>Maybe you can add "Check basic functionality" and then I can forward this to them... ;)

Along with creating a sitemap, you should also add your site to the Google Webmaster Console/Yahoo! Site Explorer to monitor any errors and last crawl date etc.<p>Also, along with checking different browsers/resolutions you should also view the site on multiple PC's as colors tend to vary dramatically. Keep in mind that not all consumers use high end monitors/pcs like we developers do.

This would be good popped in to a pdf.<p>(I could just print as pdf but that includes all the comments/etc that I don't want.)

Add proper RSS/Atom/etc. support on every relevant page. For example, all blog and news posts.<p>&#60;link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Example RSS Feed" href="<a href="http://example.com/blog/?feed=rss"" rel="nofollow">http://example.com/blog/?feed=rss"</a> /&#62;

I may be missing the point but many of the items shouldn't be done on pre-lauch as indicated. ex : HTML validation, it's not a good time to do it at this time, you can mess up the whole layout because of IE. Custom 404 : a good page can be a big ammount of work...

Pretty nice checklist for web devs. ...ranging from usability issues to SEO issues and security.<p>Even better... author is willing to augment checklist with your suggestions - which means he could protect it against obsolescence. Bookmarked.

Thanks for all the suggestions; I've just (17:18 GMT) updated the list.

so who goes through this? the web developer? the web integrator? a project manager? and also it seems to me that a few of those could be automated

Printed.