Launch Checklist

[mateoclarke]

This checklist is forked from Civic Hackers at Datamade in Chicago...
https://github.com/datamade/site-launch-checklist

Framing / Call to Action

• Make sure that the site has a clear call to action. This should not be 'hey look at this cool tool'. Rather, it should be a way for someone to engage in a meaningful way on the issue being presented.

Some examples:

• Join a mailing list (which means you need to create one)
• Attend an event
• Share on Facebook/Twitter
• Donate to a particular organization
• Create a Tumblr for people to share interesting findings (if it's a data access site)

Web Search Indexing

• If you have a staging site, tell the search engine robots not to index you with a robots.txt
• Make sure you allow indexing when you are ready to launch.

Google Analytics

• Create Google Analytics account
• Hook up the GA Tracking Code (typically in our analytics_lib.js file)
• Set up relevant Goals and Funnels
• Set up Google Webmaster Tools
• Verify site in Webmaster Tools with DNS TXT record
• Link Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics

Sharing & Rich Snippets

• Set up general meta tags
  • <meta name=“description”>
  • <meta name=“author”>
• Set up Facebook meta tags & validate here
  • <meta property=“og:site_name”>
  • <meta property=“og:title”>
  • <meta property=“og:type”>
  • <meta property=“og:description”>
  • <meta property=“og:url”>
  • <meta property=“og:image”>
• Set up Twitter meta tags & validate here
  • <meta name=“twitter:card”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:site”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:creator”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:description”> (note that this needs to be under 200 characters)
  • <meta name=“twitter:title”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:url”>
  • <meta name=“twitter:image:src”>
• Create 2-5 meme images using Canva or a similar tool

Mobile Friendliness

Test on various mobile devices:

• scrolling is easy
  - [ ] nav bar works
  - [ ] hoverable things are tappable
  - [ ] charts/maps look ok

Using localtunnel to test a site running locally:

1. npm install -g localtunnel
2. lt --port 5000 (or replace 5000 w/ whatever port you're using)
3. navigate to the url that localtunnel gives you

## Load Testing

If your site relies on a database or server-side code, it should use caching and be load tested. If it's a static HTML or Jekyll site, you can skip this section.

- [ ] set up page caching
- [ ] write a script to load test all your pages. Here's a good example from Illinois Sunshine

Readme

If the site is open source, make sure the Readme.md is complete and accurate.

Here's a few good examples:

• Geomancer
• Illinois Sunshine

The Readme should have the following sections:

• Overview
• Setup
• Running locally
• Team
• Errors / Bugs
• Pull Requests
• Copyright and License

Outreach

• Write up press release
• Identify who will be the primary person of contact and make their info prominent on the website and all PR
• Identify relevant media contacts to email
• Identify relevant social news sites (reddit, listservs, slack channels)
• Divide & conquer - send out the media blitz!

[haileypate]

Wow, this is really great!

Anyone have examples of really great Readme files that we could emulate?